Hasty Tesla tweets
Musk Acquitted in Fraud Trial
2/4/2023 12:51 am
Even before his Twitter takeover, Elon Musk was notorious for humorous tweets. In August 2018, the Tesla boss announced on the platform that the company would be taken off the stock exchange, the financing was secured. Investors who bet on falling Tesla prices are the fools. They want money from Musk – but they get nothing in court.
Tesla shareholders have failed in a class action lawsuit against CEO Elon Musk over his 2018 tweets. After deliberating for around two hours, the jury concluded that the plaintiffs could not prove that Musk was responsible for their losses in the stock market.
The case involved two tweets in which Musk announced in August 2018 that he wanted to take the electric car maker from the stock exchange at a price of $420 per share. Specifically, his claims that funding for such a deal has been secured and that there is broad investor support for it are the focus. It later emerged that there were no written commitments from funders – and many key investors wanted Tesla to remain public. Musk gave up the plan a little later. Tesla shares then rose by up to eleven percent, and trading has since been suspended because of the tweets.
The suing investors accused Musk of fraudulently triggering fluctuations in the share price with his claims in the tweet. The aim was to use the “artificial manipulation” to harm those investors who had bet on a falling share price. That’s why they lost money. Musk’s lawyer said in the proceedings that the Tesla boss may not have been precise enough in his choice of words, but that he was verbally promised enough money for the deal. The entire trial was open to the public via audio transmission.