Elon Musk sells almost $4 billion in Tesla shares

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
9 Nov 09:34

Finding a way to pay for his debt, Musk sells Tesla shares.

Musk sold more than 19 million shares (Bloomberg)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk sold almost $4 billion worth of shares of Tesla stock, according to SEC filings on Tuesday. This comes just over a week after he closed his $44 billion purchase of social media giant Twitter.

Looking for ways to pay for the Twitter deal, Musk took billions of dollars in debt and earlier sold $15.5 billion worth of Tesla shares. He even went on to include an idea to charge verified accounts 8$ a month.

On Tuesday, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) indicated that the Twitter CEO had disposed of more than 19 million shares worth of $3.9 billion.

Although Musk pulled Twitter off the stock market, he pulled the company into heavy debt, which is a risky choice for a money-losing business.

Twitter launches new paid subscription

Twitter began rolling out a contentious new paid subscription system last Saturday, which billionaire Elon Musk, the social network's unpredictable new owner, ordered staff to construct after taking over last week.

Days into Tesla CEO Elon Musk's leadership of one of the world's major venues for dialogue and activism, his promises and provocations have elicited a flood of responses, including warnings from the United Nations and an apology from Twitter's co-founder.

His intention to reduce content monitoring on the site has alarmed UN rights chief Volker Turk, who urged him on Saturday to make human rights a priority for the social network. "Twitter has a responsibility to avoid amplifying content that results in harm to people's rights," Turk said in his open letter.

He said that the news that Musk had fired every member of the platform's human rights team was "not, from my perspective, an encouraging start."