Elon Musk sells £5.8bn of Tesla shares ahead of Twitter war

Elon Musk has sold nearly $7bn (£5.8bn) of Tesla stock as the billionaire has his finances sorted ahead of a court battle with Twitter.

He has sold about 8 million shares in recent days, according to a series of regulatory filings.

“It’s important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock if Twitter forces this deal to close and some equity partners don’t come through (hopefully unlikely),” Musk tweeted late Tuesday.

Musk is by far the largest individual shareholder in Tesla and Twitter.

Tesla shares rose nearly 2% before Wall Street opened on Wednesday.

Shares of Twitter have risen 16% in the past month, with most seeing little chance of Musk facing success in court, and have since risen another 3%.

Musk filed a countersuit against Twitter last week, accusing the company of fraud in its $44bn (£36.4bn) takeover.

He claimed Twitter was withholding key information and misleading his team about the size of its user base.

Musk alleges that Twitter committed fraud, breach of contract and violations of securities laws in Texas, where he lives.

Earlier this year, Musk offered to buy Twitter and then tried to back out of the deal, claiming the social platform was riddled with more “spam bots” and fake accounts than Twitter disclosed.

Musk said in the spring that he planned not to sell a significant amount of his Tesla stake after lining up to raise capital to buy Twitter, but Wedbush’s industry analyst Dan Ives said Wednesday that “things have changed dramatically.”

Wedbush raised its price target on Twitter shares, “in our view, a Twitter deal is now more likely and Wall Street sees through Musk’s move,” Mr Ives wrote to clients.

“We could also see Musk trying to resolve this powder keg before the Twitter deal officially goes to court in October,” he wrote.

“At the very least, we’re seeing a huge $5bn (£4.1bn) to $10bn (£8.2bn) settlement from Musk that Twitter is starting to count in stock.”