London, Europe Brief News – US businessman Elon Musk said that he could have sold shares of SpaceX to take Tesla private in 2018.
Musk is being sued by Tesla shareholders for a series of tweets he wrote in August 2018. He said h had “funding secured” to take the automaker private for $420 per share, and that “investor support” for such a deal was “confirmed.”
Trading in Tesla was halted after his tweets. However, its share price remained volatile for weeks.
The shareholders in the certified class action lawsuit allege that Musk’s tweets were reckless and false, and he is also relying on his statements to make investment decisions cost them significant amounts of money.
Elon Musk continued his testimony in a trial accusing him of defrauding investors by driving up the price of Tesla stock with his tweets on Monday, saying that he understood that Saudi financiers were “unequivocally” behind his plan to take the electric carmaker private in 2018.
The trial tests Musk’s penchant for using Twitter to air his sometimes irreverent views, and when the world’s second-richest person can be held liable for crossing a line.
He testified that he had had a meeting with investors from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund on 31 July 2018 and believed they would back the buyout plan, which would have been a $72m deal.
Musk said he believed he could use his ownership of SpaceX to help bolster the deal.
