Austin Tesla CEO Elon Musk has sold another big package of shares in the electric car maker in the middle of his takeover attempt on Twitter. He parted with about 4.4 million Tesla shares, taking about four billion dollars, according to documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). After that, no more sales are planned, he wrote on Twitter on Friday night.
Musk did not give reasons for the share sale in the documents. Last fall, he parted ways with more than $16 billion worth of Tesla stock – mostly to pay due taxes on redeemed stock options.
However, he has now committed to raising up to $21 billion of his own funds for the Twitter purchase. How exactly he plans to lift them is still unclear. Musk still holds a good 168 million Tesla shares after the recent sale. With part of this, he wants to secure a loan of 12.5 billion dollars, which will also be used to finance the Twitter deal.
Musk made a total of $46.5 billion in financing commitments for the Twitter purchase. He agreed to the takeover with the online service, but is still dependent on enough shareholders to give him his shares at the price of $ 54.20.
The tech billionaire explains his interest in Twitter by saying that freedom of speech is restricted on the platform. He wants to change that. This puts him in line with conservatives, corona skeptics and supporters of ex-President Donald Trump in the US, who all complain of “censorship” on Twitter. On Friday night, Musk also revealed his political views a little further by tweeting: he supported President Barack Obama at the time, “but today’s Democratic Party has been hijacked by extremists”.
