Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, is infamous for making provocative posts on Twitter and sending stock prices into wild swings. Several major companies and a large number of traders have felt the impact of Musk’s tweets lately. One investor, however, has decided that enough was enough and took the notorious billionaire to court.
Twitter’s investor Giuseppe Pampena has accused the world’s richest person of manipulating the social network’s share price and filed a class-action lawsuit against him. According to Pampena, when Musk agreed to go ahead with his purchase of Twitter in early October, he “essentially acknowledged that he had been bluffing all along” about backing out of the deal. Tesla’s CEO allegedly brought down the share price of Twitter to improve his negotiating position, ignoring the fact that his actions brought significant losses to investors.
Giuseppe Pampena has stated that Musk’s fraudulent actions have pushed the price of Twitter’s stock down by 7-8%. “Musk proceeded to make statements, send tweets, and engage in conduct designed to create doubt about the deal and drive Twitter’s stock down substantially in order to create leverage that Musk hoped to use to either back out of the purchase or re-negotiate the buyout price by as much as 25% which, if accomplished, would result in an $11 billion reduction in the buyout consideration,” the lawsuit said.
Elon Musk agreed to purchase Twitter for $44 billion on April 25, 2022. The acquisition was originally planned to be completed by the end of the year. However, Musk pulled out of the deal on July 9, only to change his mind on October 4.
