Elon Musk Realises $1bn, After Another Tesla Share Sale

The world’s richest man Elon Musk has offloaded another tranche of shares in the electric car maker Tesla, according to media reports.

The share sell-off is part of Elon Musk’s scheme to respect the decision of a Twitter poll. Earlier this month Musk had asked Twitter whether he should sell 10 percent of his shareholding in Tesla.

The result was 57.9 percent voting yes he should sell the 10 percent stake, with 42.1 percent of voters voting no.

Half way there

Days later Musk responded and sold 3 percent of his shareholding in the world’s most valuable car maker, Tesla, raising roughly $5 billion.

Despite this sell-off triggering a share price decline, Musk then followed this up and sold another block of shares worth $687.3 million (£512m).

Now Reuters has reported, citing regulatory filings, that Musk has sold another 934,091 shares worth $1.05 billion.

However, that came after Musk exercised options to buy 2.15 million shares.

Musk has now sold a total of 9.2 million shares worth $9.9 billion.

However all these sales means that Musk is only over halfway towards his Twitter commitment to sell 10 percent of his shareholding.

Musk held just over 170 million shares in September according to Bloomberg, so 10 percent of his stake is around 17 million shares.

Billionaires tax

Musk is the richest man in the world thanks to his shareholdings, and the share sale will help him pay the potential ‘billionaires tax’, as proposed by US Democrats.

US Democrats have proposed tackling the gap between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else by introducing a tax that the 700 billionaires in the US would pay on the annual increase in the value of stocks and shares they own.

Currently, tax is only due when gains are “realised”, which means the holder only pays when they sell the stock and book the profit.

Now that Musk has ‘realised’ some shares, it will result in him having to make a tax payment.

It is estimated that thanks to his shareholdings in both Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk has a paper fortune of approximately $330bn.