After creating a poll on Twitter about the sale of part of Tesla shares, the head of the company Elon Musk provoked a sharp decline in their value. In just two days, the company’s stock price fell more than $ 200, and Mr. Musk’s personal fortune estimate fell by $ 50 billion over the same time.
Such a sharp decline in the value of personal assets is a record according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index – the last time this was observed in 2019, when, with the divorce of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (Jeff Bezos), his fortune fell by $ 36 billion. Now, Bezos’ lag behind Musk has decreased to $ 83 billion, although this was $ 143 billion; more than the entire fortune of Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
Mr. Musk posted the results of a poll conducted on Twitter on November 7. A total of 3.5 million people took part in the voting. Of these, 57.9% voted for the billionaire to sell 10% of Tesla shares to pay taxes. The owner of the company promised to fulfill the will of his readers, whatever it turns out to be. At the same time, as noted, immediately before the survey; his brother Kimbal Musk, who is a member of Tesla’s board of directors, sold his assets. As a result, the company’s shares fell 12%.
As of June 30, 2021, Mr. Musk owned 170.5 million shares of Tesla. At the close of trading on November 5, the value of one share was $ 1222 – at this price; selling 10% of the entire package would bring him about $ 21 billion.
Tesla shares fell another 12% after news of the sale of a large stake by Elon Musk’s brother
Kimbal Musk is a member of Tesla’s board of directors, and documents registered by American regulators show that last Friday the brother of the head of the company sold about 15% of his shares for a total of about $ 100 million. This happened even before Elon Musk brought up the issue of the need to sell 10% of his Tesla shares to a vote on Twitter.
The day after the announcement of the results of the survey; the volume of trading in the company’s shares doubled from the usual level. Musk owns about 170 million shares of Tesla, if he is ready to sell 10%, then this number corresponds to 17 million shares. Yesterday morning, US time, 35 million shares were thrown onto the market. Whether Elon Musk started selling his shares will become known only at the end of this week, since the law obliges him to report on such a deal if it took place.
If we take the period from October 28 to November 5, then other members of the company’s board of directors were also involved in the sale of large stakes in Tesla at that time. Then the capitalization of the business of this automaker exceeded $ 1 trillion, and the large shareholders quite expectedly seized the moment to sell the securities with the greatest profit.
