Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk sold $ 5 billion worth of shares in the electric vehicle maker after taking a poll on Twitter asking whether he should divest 10% of its titles.
Musk, the world’s richest man with a net worth of $ 300 billion, sold 4.5 million shares this week, according to documents filed Wednesday with the US market regulator (SEC).
But the documents do not indicate that he acted in response to the poll that began Saturday, in which 57.9% of 3.5 million voters responded in favor of selling shares.
On Monday, Musk sold $ 1.1 billion in stock to settle tax obligations after he exercised a stock option. The sale began under a defined exchange plan in September, weeks before the survey.
It was unclear if the rest of the sale, reported Tuesday and Wednesday, was also scheduled before the Twitter poll. In those days he sold 3.6 million shares for $ 4 billion.
Musk tweeted on Saturday: “There has been a lot of talk that unrealized gains are a form of tax evasion, so I propose to sell 10% of my Tesla stock. Do you support that?”
“I will abide by the result of this poll, whatever it is,” he added in another tweet after posting the poll to his 63 million followers.
To reach the sale of 10% of his shares in Tesla, the 50-year-old South African will have to sell several million more shares than he sold this week. Before the sales, he owned more than 170 million Tesla shares, corresponding to about 17% of the company, according to the SEC.
Musk’s wealth grew with the recent rise in Tesla’s stock price, which went from $ 130 in early 2020 to $ 1,222.09 last Friday.
On Monday at the opening of Wall Street, the stock fell 7.2% after the survey, but recovered on Wednesday with an increase of almost 4 percent.
For that reason, Musk sold his titles on Monday at a significantly lower price than if he had done so before his tweet about the poll.
Musk launched the consultation after a proposal by Democratic lawmakers in the United States to tax large capital heavily through their shares, which usually pay taxes only when they are sold.
But Musk’s intervention in the discussion about income inequality in the United States and who should pay for social security programs drew strong criticism.
“Whether or not the richest man in the world pays his taxes should not depend on a poll on Twitter,” Democratic Senator Ron Wyden wrote on that social network.
“It is time to have a billionaire income tax,” Wyden added, to which Musk responded with a personal insult.
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx