Tesla boss Elon Musk sells £3.7bn of stock after Twitter poll 

Tesla boss Elon Musk sells £3.7bn of stock in the electric car giant after Twitter poll


True to his tweet: Tesla boss Elon Musk has sold £3.7bn of shares

Tesla boss Elon Musk has sold £3.7billion of shares in the company after promising to offload a chunk of this stake.

Musk made a series of deals over the first three days of the week after he ran a weekend Twitter poll asking if he should sell 10 per cent of his holding in the electric car maker.

He vowed to follow the outcome ‘whichever way’ it went – and 58 per cent of respondents voted ‘yes’. The results of the poll wiped around 16 per cent off Tesla’s share price on Monday and Tuesday and cut £37billion off his personal wealth.

This was the largest ever two-day fall in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Regulatory filings now reveal that Musk – who is still the world’s richest man with a £223billion fortune – has started to sell shares. It was the first time he has sold any stock since 2016.

The 4.5m shares Musk sold amount to about 3 per cent of his total holding in Tesla – while a 10 per cent stake would be worth around £13.5billion. He has not said when or if he intends to sell more.

The 50-year-old South African-born entrepreneur launched his Twitter poll in response to criticisms about the amount of tax billionaires pay.

He said he had been prompted to turn to the internet for advice because of claims that ‘unrealised capital gains’ are a form of tax avoidance.

The company’s stock market run has seen it enter the coveted $1 trillion club.

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