He appeared in court
On Monday, Elon Musk said in a San Francisco federal court that he could have sold shares of SpaceX to privatize Tesla in 2018. He was and remains the CEO and largest shareholder of both companies.
Earlier, investor Glen Littleton sued Tesla, Elon Musk , and Tesla board members, alleging that the entrepreneur’s tweets in August 2018 were false and cost investors billions of dollars, provoking fluctuations in prices for shares, options and bonds of Tesla.
Then Elon Musk said on Twitter that he was considering the possibility of privatizing Tesla at a price of $420 per share. Tesla stock trading was halted after his tweets and the stock price remained volatile for several weeks.
Musk later claimed that he had a verbal commitment from the Saudi Arabian Sovereign Wealth Fund and was confident that the funding would come at the handshake price he offered. However, the deal never took place.
In a court appearance this week, Musk said another reason he said he had “funding secured” for the deal back in 2018 was that he could sell SpaceX stock to fund the deal.
Musk said under oath: “SpaceX shares in and of themselves meant ‘secured funding.’ It’s not that I want to sell SpaceX shares, but I could, and if you look at buying Twitter, that’s what I did. I sold shares in Tesla to complete my purchase of Twitter. And I would do the same with Tesla.”
