The Tesla chief promised to sell 10% of his shares. So far, he’s about a third of the way there.
On Saturday, November 6, Elon Musk logged onto his Twitter account and appeared to put a multibillion-dollar financial decision into the hands of millions of online voters. “Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock. Do you support this?” he asked his followers. “I will abide by the results of this poll, whichever way it goes.” Almost 58% of respondents voted in favor of the sale. True to his word, the electric car billionaire began parting with shares just a few days later. Two weeks in, Musk has sold roughly 8.2 million shares, worth about $8.8 billion—putting billions of dollars into the famously cash-poor billionaire’s pockets, even after he used about $3 billion of the proceeds to pay taxes due from exercising some of his stock options.
