Musk’s £3bn Tesla share sale to fund Twitter deal

TESLA boss elon Musk has sold £3.2bn shares in the electric car maker to raise funds for his £35bn deal for Twitter.

The tycoon sold 4.4m shares, or 2.6pc of his 16.6pc holding, on Tuesday and Wednesday after Twitter’s board backed his takeover approach.

Shares in Tesla have been on the slide since Musk took a stake in Twitter this month. Tesla investors fear that he has bitten off more than he can chew by looking to buy Twitter while also running the electric car maker and his rocket company SpaceX.

Musk is paying $54.20 per share to take Twitter private and has pledged to provide £17bn in equity towards the deal. The rest will be funded by debt from Wall Street banks.

Musk still owns just over 168m Tesla shares, worth around £150bn.

He moved to reassure investors on Thursday, writing on Twitter: ‘No further TSlA sales planned after today.’

Musk is the world’s richest man according to Forbes, worth an estimated £193bn. But details of Musk’s business plans for the social media website remain thin.