Amid the legal battle with Twitter over his $44 billion buyout deal, the Chairman of Telsa, Elon Musk has sold about $7 billion worth of his electric car company shares.
According to AFP, a legal filing published on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s website showed that Musk had on Tuesday sold Telsa shares after he previously sold $7.9 million shares on August 5 and 9, 2022.
“In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close and some equity partners don’t come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock,” Musk, the world’s richest man wrote on Twitter late Tuesday.
Musk and Twitter are locked in a legal battle over his effort to walk away from the April agreement with the social media company, but a judge has ordered that a trial will begin in October.
The Telsa boss has filed a countersuit, accusing Twitter of fraud and alleging the social media platform misled him about key aspects of its business before he agreed to a $44 billion buyout.
The move comes after Musk sold around $8.5 billion worth of shares in the electric carmaker in April as he was preparing to finance the Twitter deal. He tweeted at the time: “No further TSLA sales planned after today.”