Musk accused of letting down Tesla investors

Elon Musk has been accused of letting down Tesla investors after selling nearly £3.5billion of the company’s shares following his disaster-strewn takeover of Twitter.

Musk’s ‘will-he-won’t-he’ pursuit of the social media site has helped drag down the value of the electric vehicle maker while it is facing serious challenges of its own.

Tesla’s slide has also seen his personal fortune nearly halve from a peak of £298billion last year to £157billion according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index – though he remains the world’s richest person.

Back in August, Musk sold £6billion worth of Tesla stock to finance the £38billion Twitter deal even as he was entangled in a legal fight to try to get out of it.

Yet at the time he pledged that he had finished selling shares and that even if Twitter forced through the sale it was ‘important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock’. But Musk was forced into the deal which completed on October 27.

Now, regulatory filings show that he sold 19.5m Tesla shares from November 4 to 8.

It means that in all, Musk has sold about £17billion worth of the stock since April, when he first filed a bid for Twitter.

The transactions have left industry analysts exasperated. Daniel Ives of Wedbush Securities in New York said: ‘Our fear heading into the final days of the deal was that Musk was going to be forced to sell more Tesla stock to fund the disaster Twitter deal and ultimately those fears came true.

Musk, who now styles himself Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator’, tweeted yesterday: ‘Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months. We will keep what works & change what doesn’t.’

Tesla fell 7 per cent yesterday and are down by 55 per cent so far this year.