Elon Musk has lost over $1bn on Twitter deal already as stocks fall following his tweets
Tesla stocks are also dropping, and Mr Musk’s net worth has fallen by another $10bn after allegations he sexually harassed a flight attendant
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Your support makes all the difference.Elon Musk has lost over $1 billion as Twitter stock has plummeted.
The Tesla chief executive had purchased a 9.1 stake in the company before 14 April, when he made the offer to purchase the social media company outright for $54.20 per share. At that point, he owned 73 million shares.
When Mr Musk purchased those shares it was for approximately $36 each – and following his offer they rose to $51.70. Now, however, they have dropped to below his original purchase price, turning his gain into a $40 million loss.
This is the latest in a series of expensive losses for the multibillionaire. Two weeks ago, Mr Musk’s electric vehicle company had its stock fall almost 16 per cent to $728. Mr Musk had sold roughly $8.5 billion worth of shares in Tesla to help fund the purchase of Twitter.
Twitter’s stock had been falling since Mr Musk has begun tweeting more provocatively about the deal, suggesting that he believes at least 20 per cent of the platform’s accounts are bots with the implication that he overpaid for the social media company.
Twitter chief executive Parag Agrawal had sent out a lengthy thread explaining how it determins the percentage of bots and fake accounts.
“Unfortunately, we don’t believe that this specific estimation can be performed externally, given the critical need to use both public and private information (which we can’t share),” Mr Agrawal tweeted.
“Externally, it’s not even possible to know which accounts are counted as mDAUs [monthly daily active users] on any given day. There are LOTS of details that are very important underneath this high-level description. We shared an overview of the estimation process with Elon a week ago and look forward to continuing the conversation with him, and all of you.”
In response, Mr Musk tweeted the poop emoji at the Twitter head. He has also claimed that the deal is “temporarily on hold” over this concern, but reports suggest that Twitter is keen for the deal to go through with the purchase and that Mr Musk’s allegations – which would have been revealed during the due diligence process, which Mr Musk did not do – will not stop that.
Mr Musk also recently lost $10bn of his net worth in a single day after allegations emerged that he sexually harassed a flight attendant.
The report said that the Tesla chief paid the flight attendant $250,000 to settle a sexual misconduct claim against him. Mr Musk has denied the accusations, calling them “utterly untrue” and adding “it never happened”. He told Insider, which broke the news, that the story was a “politically motivated hit piece”, adding that there was “a lot more to this story”.
Mr Musk has not responded to The Independent’s multiple requests for comment.
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