The Tesla boss had announced that he would sell ten percent of his shares. The sale that has now been made corresponds to about three percent.
(Photo: dpa)
new York Tesla CEO Elon Musk has sold shares valued at around five billion dollars after a vote on Twitter about the sale of company shares. On his first share sale since 2016, Musk’s trust company redeemed nearly 3.6 million shares valued at approximately $ 4 billion.
He also sold a further 934,000 shares for $ 1.1 billion, according to a mandatory notification to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday evening (local time). The 4.5 million shares correspond to about three percent of his shares in the electric vehicle manufacturer.
Musk sells the shares to pay taxes on the proceeds. Since he is rewarded in stock options at Tesla, he can – at least if he draws them – use cash to pay income taxes due. In parallel with the stock sale, Musk now exercised 2.15 million options from 2012 valued at around $ 2.5 billion.
Tesla has seen a massive stock market rally in recent years that, according to billionaire charts such as the “Forbes” list or “Bloomberg Billionaires” – at least on paper – made Musk the richest person in the world with an estimated fortune of almost $ 300 billion Has. Musk had users vote on Twitter over the weekend whether he should sell ten percent of his Tesla shares. 58 percent of the 3.5 million votes were in favor.
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In the vote, the Tesla boss alluded to a debate about tax avoidance by the super-rich and plans for taxes on unrealized price gains. What Musk ultimately wanted to achieve with the vote and the extent to which he planned to sell shares can only be speculated about so far. The SEC announcement shows that at least the sale of the 934,000 shares was planned over two months before the vote.
Note: A previous version of this article was headed that Musk sold only $ 1.55 billion worth of shares. Among other things, this figure did not include sales through the trust company. We have therefore corrected the heading.
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