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lon Musk sold at least $3.95 billion of Tesla stock just days after he closed his buyout of Twitter.
According to a regulatory filing filed in New York on Tuesday, the Tesla Inc. CEO offloaded 19.5 million shares, his first sale of the automaker’s stock since August. The transactions were not pre-planned according to the filings.
In August Musk has said he was done selling Tesla stock. In a twitter exchange with a follower he indicated it was important to not let himself be forced into an “emergency sale” of the electric carmaker’s stock as a consequence of his acquisition of the social media giant and an inability to bring in additional equity partners.
Regardless of his statements however, analysts had speculated he might have to sell more stock to complete the Twitter deal. So far he has offloaded roughly $36 billion in shares over the past year. About half of that was done since he went public with his plans to acquire the social media platform.
In other news, Musk caused waves when he told followers on Twitter to vote for Republicans in the midterm election, to prevent total control of the government by one party. It came on the heels of a wave of unrest from progressives on the social media site, who complained his loosing of moderation standards was allowing more racist and intolerant material to remain on the site.
