Saturday, November 16, 2024

Tesla faces investor lawsuit over Musk tweets on 10% stock sales

Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) was sued over CEO Elon Musk’s social media posts, including a Twitter poll on stock sales, which dragged down the company’s stock prices.

Tesla investor David Wagner has requested access to internal records in order to explore if Tesla and Musk broke a deal with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and whether Tesla’s board members breached their fiduciary duties.

Musk agreed to have the company’s lawyers pre-approve tweets with relevant information about the company as part of a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over his post about taking the firm private in 2018.

The complaint, which was filed in the Delaware Court of Chancery on Thursday, wants to collect records and books pertaining to his tweets, as well as papers indicating if his stock sales tweets were vetted or pre-approved in advance.

Another shareholder sued Musk and the company’s board of directors in March, accusing him of breaking his 2018 deal with the Securities and Exchange Commission and subjecting shareholders to billions of dollars in losses.

Tesla shares, which had been hovering near record highs, dropped roughly a quarter of their value after Musk announced on Nov. 6 that he would sell 10% of his own if Twitter users agreed. He has sold roughly $14 billion worth of stock since then.

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