The following bad tweet did not constitute fraud, according to a San Francisco jury on Friday.
Tweet may have been deleted
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However, Elon Musk’s famous “Funds Secured” tweet was considered fraudulent by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2018.(opens in new window)in the months after he tweeted it, said he knew such trades were far less certain than he had allowed, adding, “For certain trading terms, including price, potential funds We have not discussed it with our supply partners,” he said.
In short, the SEC thought he was lying, sued him, and Musk settled(opens in new window) By resigning as chairman of Tesla and paying $40 million, its fraud lawsuit.
But in this latest trial, things went his way.
Elon Musk has locked his Twitter account and made it private. Here’s why:
The lawsuit, which also includes Tesla and its board of directors as defendants, accuses Tesla of hurting them financially by giving the false impression that Tesla’s stock price would prematurely skyrocket to $420 per share. It was raised by an investor. Be private.
The market seems to have reacted to the tweet, with Tesla’s stock rising 11% on the day he tweeted, but not as high as $420, to just $387.46.(opens in new window)Tesla’s stock then plummeted to about $262 about a month later.(opens in new window)when Musk went to the Joe Rogan Experience and smoked weed on camera(opens in new window)The drop undoubtedly caused shareholders a lot of pain, but the pain wasn’t the result of fraud on Musk’s part, according to the jury.
For three weeks, Tesla and Musk argued that the “funding secured” tweet was actually true and that $420 per share wasn’t a weed joke.(opens in new window)and happened to be Musk’s best guess as to how the deal might pan out.
An anonymous male juror stuck around after the trial, explaining why the jury accepted Mr. Musk’s view, telling The New York Times.(opens in new window)“Nothing gave me an ‘ahaha’ moment,” and “Elon Musk is a man who can sneeze and the stock market can react.
One of the interesting new details from the latest proceedings is that we know Musk has spoken to at least one potential funding partner about financing the deal: Saudi Arabian Sovereign Wealth Fund.(opens in new window)Plaintiffs’ attorneys said transcripts of their interactions with Mr. Musk and the group show they weren’t fully participating, and they still want to know more.(opens in new window).
Musk also said that to complete the deal, he would have done something similar to how he acquired Twitter: leveraging a stake in another company in which he holds a large stake: in this case. , SpaceX(opens in new window).
