Elon Musk Sells $5bn Of Tesla Shares After Twitter Poll

Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, has sold about $5bn (£3.7bn) of shares in the electric carmaker after a Twitter poll.

Gatekeepers News reports that Musk ran a Twitter poll on Saturday, asking: “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?”.

Tesla’s shares fell by around 16 percent, two days after the poll garnered over 3.5 million votes and about 57.9 percent voted in favour of Musk selling a 10 percent chunk of his holdings. Although, it regained some ground on Wednesday.

Tesla is the world’s most valuable carmaker, with a stock market valuation of more than $1tn.

His trust sold almost 3.6 million shares in Tesla, worth around $4bn.

According to filings with the US stock market regulator, Musk also sold another 934,000 shares for about $1.1bn after exercising options to acquire nearly 2.2 million shares.

The documents showed that the sale of about a fifth of the shares was made based on a pre-arranged trading plan set up in September, long before Musk’s social media posts at the weekend about selling some of his shares.

However, the regulatory filings also showed that the sale of the remainder of the shares had not been scheduled.

The sales equate to about 3 percent of Musk’s total holdings in Tesla, though it is immediately clear if the sale was related to his weekend Twitter poll, or if he intends to stagger further sales.

Gatekeepers News reports that Musk is the world’s richest person, with a personal fortune estimated to be more than $280bn.