Elon Musk sells $6.9bn in Tesla shares after Twitter poll
Tesla CEO Elon Musk sold more than $6.9 billion worth of shares in the electric carmaker this week, according to regulatory filings released on Friday.
The 50-year-old South African billionaire sold more than 5.1 million Tesla shares, of which about 4.2 million were held in a trust.
His massive disposal hit Tesla’s share price, which slumped 15.4 percent over the week.
Tesla last month became the latest US tech giant to hit $1 trillion in market value.
Musk’s selloff came days after he created a Twitter poll — in which millions voted — asking whether he should sell 10 percent of his huge stake in the electric carmaker.
On Saturday, Musk tweeted:
“Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock. Do you support this?”
In the poll, almost 58 percent of the 3.5 million votes cast were in favor of him proceeding with the sale.
Tesla shares had plummeted at the Wall Street opening on Monday and have fallen further since.
The stock Musk disposed of this week was sold at a significantly lower share price than if he had sold before his tweet.
Regulatory filings showed the tech entrepreneur had initiated the sale of at least some of these shares ahead of the Twitter poll.
According to the latest filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Musk still holds about 167 million Tesla shares.
Musk’s stock sale will be liable for capital gains tax of at least $1.4 billion.
His tweets followed a proposal by US Congressional Democrats to tax the super wealthy more heavily by targeting stocks, which are usually only taxed when sold.
Musk is the world’s richest person, worth $294 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. (AFP)
318346 879319BTW, and I hope we do not drag this too long, but care to remind us just what kind of weapons were being used on Kurds by Saddams army? Towards the tune of hundreds of thousands of dead Speak about re-written history 162607
Do you have a spam issue on this blog; I also am a blogger,
and I was wondering your situation; we have developed some nice methods
and we are looking to swap techniques with others, why not shoot me an e-mail if
interested.
Good way of explaining, and good paragraph to obtain data on the topic of my presentation focus, which i am
going to deliver in school.
Wow, this piece of writing is nice, my sister is analyzing these things, thus I am going to tell her.
My spouse and I stumbled over here different website and thought I should check
things out. I like what I see so now i’m following you.
Look forward to checking out your web page again.
Hello, I enjoy reading through your article. I wanted to write
a little comment to support you.
I have read so many posts about the blogger lovers but this piece
of writing is truly a fastidious piece of writing, keep it
up.
It’s very straightforward to find out any matter on net as
compared to textbooks, as I found this piece of
writing at this web site.
I really like it when people get together and share ideas.
Great site, keep it up!
I don’t know if it’s just me or if perhaps everybody else encountering
issues with your blog. It appears as though some of the written text on your posts are running off
the screen. Can somebody else please comment and let me know if this
is happening to them too? This could be a issue with my browser because I’ve had this happen previously.
Many thanks