Elon Musk Sells Tesla Shares To Help Buy Twitter

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Elon Musk Sells Tesla Shares To Help Buy Twitter

Elon Musk Sells Tesla Stake To Acquire Twitter

Elon Musk sold his Tesla shares worth $8.5 billion lately probably to fund his plan of acquiring Twitter. He sold 9.6 million shares, reveals US securities filings. How now owns just a 5.6 percent stake in the electric vehicle company. However, it is yet to be understood whether he has sold all his recent Tesla shares.

The Tesla CEO closed a deal of acquiring Twitter for $44 billion. His net worth is about $268 billion, as mentioned in Forbes's wealthiest person list.

Meanwhile, Musk announced to be providing an equity commitment to Twitter worth $21 billion. His $44 billion investment was in cash. It is not yet revealed how he would raise the $12.5 billion financing in equities. His stake in SpaceX is 43.61 percent and it is valued at $100 billion.

This is the first stock sale of Tesla by the CEO after he offloaded shares worth $16.4 billion late last year following a Twitter poll to sell 10 percent of his stake.

Musk started buying Twitter shares in January this year and by April he announced to have acquired 9.1 percent of the company's stock which is worth $2.64 billion. He became the largest shareholder of Twitter. This led to the largest intraday surge of the company since 2013 when it issued IPOs. He was invited to join the board of directors. Four days later he reversed his decision to become the director as the position would restrict him not to own more than 14.9 percent shares.

About two weeks later he made an offer to acquire Twitter for $43 billion, which is equal to $54.20 per share. The offer was non-binding and unsolicited. He simultaneously said to take the company private. Critics defined the offer as a hostile acquisition attempt.

He later disclosed to have secured financing from Morgan Stanley, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Mizuho Bank, Societe Generale, Bank of America and more banks.

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