Elon Musk sells USD 8.5 billion worth of Tesla shares to bolster Twitter acquisition

Tesla CEO Elon Musk sold 4.4 million shares of the electric carmaker, showed US securities filings on Thursday. The shares are worth USD 8.5 billion. This mover from the billionaire is likely to help him to generate funds for his proposed acquisition of Twitter.

In a tweet, Musk said that there were no plans to share more Tesla shares.

Musk has offered to but social media giant Twitter for USD 44 billion. Market watchers and speculators are watching Musk's moves very closely for a sign that he might backtrack on his offer to buy Twitter.

In past, Elon Musk has backtracked after making mega-announcements. He declined to take up a seat on Twitter's board at the last minute earlier this month. In 2018, Musk had declared that he would take Tesla private. He even said that he had "funding secured" for USD 72 billion deal. But he didn't move ahead with the offer.

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If Musk wants to walk away from Twitter acquisition, he would have to pay UD 1 billion acquisition fee. Although the amount appears huge, it is a but a sliver of Musk's estimated total wealth of USD 240 billion.

On Thursday (April 28), Twitter shares climbed after having reported mixed earnings.

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Near 1850 GMT, shares in the microblogging company stood at $49.18, up 1.1 percent from Wednesday, but well below the $54.20 price in the agreement between Twitter and Musk.

(With inputs from agencies)