Elon Musk’s verbal incontinence is not a new thing. In recent months, on account of the soap opera that the billionaire’s purchase of Twitter became, we had plenty of reminders of this, and since he already owns the social network, the level has not dropped either, to tell the truth. But the fact that recently it has been one of the topics of conversation of the moment does not mean that it is something new, in fact it has been dragging this bad habit for quite some time.
There are many who still clearly remember the tweet published by Musk in August 2018, specifically on Tuesday the 7th. In said message we could read “Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.”, that is, that it was considering de-listing Tesla (as it has done with its acquisition of Twitter), paying $420 per share, and that it was also guaranteed the necessary funds to carry out said operation.
After this message, many others arrived, part of them as responses to users of the social network, in which Elon Musk supported this theory as a real possibility, which made the markets and investors grant him credibility and, therefore, They will react accordingly. And the consequences were, you can already imagine, of a formidable volume. Put another way, this statement substantially affected shareholders and investors in the company. And the problem is that it wasn’t true.
Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 7, 2018
Thus, Elon Musk asserted his position to manipulate the market, something that obviously could not come for free. The SEC has already carried out an investigation in this regard, as a result of which Elon Musk had to temporarily leave his role as CEO of Tesla. However, that was just the appetizer, since this week the trial begins for the lawsuit filed by multiple investors who consider that their interests were seriously harmed by the message that Musk, by the way, still maintains on his Twitter account, as you can see about this very paragraph.
The prospects are not good for the billionaire, ArsTechnica has consulted various lawyers and the criterion is common: Elon Musk will lose the trial. For all of them, the question is not whether they will be declared innocent or guilty, no, the question that follows is how much they will have to pay for having manipulated the market with those inappropriate messages, with the addition that the official Tesla account did not refute at any time what Musk said. On the contrary, it served as an endorsement to give it credibility.
And everything indicates that this is another move that is not going to be cheap for Elon Musk either. The plaintiffs have made their accounts about the effects of Musk’s messages on their investments and, consequently, claim the millionaire and the company for no less than $66.67 per share. Musk defends himself by arguing that not all of Tesla’s stock price fluctuations in the period under review were due to his tweets. Another court has already determined that their information was misleading, so now all that remains is to know how much of those losses must be assumed by the already somewhat battered finances of the millionaire and the company.
