Elon Musk — the richest, er, second richest man in the world — cashed out more of his Tesla stocks this week, to the tune of 22 million shares for $3.6 billion. Not enough to muscle ahead of Louis Vuitton chairman Bernard Arnault, however, whose $171 billion trumps Musk's $164 billion (give or take $3.6 billion) and allows the French investor to hang on to his newly enjoyed status as wealthiest billionaire on Earth. Musk's latest dip into the Tesla trough comes after the sputtering Twitter CEO declared back in April that he would not be selling any more TSLA.
From CNBC:
Tesla CEO Elon Musk sold about 22 million more shares in his electric vehicle business, which were worth around $3.6 billion, according to a financial filing out Wednesday night. The transactions took place between Monday and Wednesday this week according to the filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. …
According to financial research firm VerityData, Musk has sold 94,202,321 shares so far this year at an average price of $243.46 per share for pre-tax proceeds of approximately $22.93 billion.
After Musk's Twitter takeover, he told employees there that he sold Tesla shares to "save" their business.
Tesla shares have been declining this year, and sliding even further since he took on that new responsibility.
Shares of Tesla closed down 2.6% on Wednesday at $156.80, dropping the company's market capitalization to $495 billion. Tesla shares were down 55% year-to-date as of Wednesday's close.
