A group of Tesla investors is about to recoup an average of $12,000 per person for losses incurred due to Elon Musk’s 2018 tweet, in which the CEO said he had secured “secured financing” to buy the automaker for $420 per share from the stock exchange. But that didn’t happen in the end.
At the time, Elon Musk’s tweet caused Tesla’s share price to fluctuate and the US stock market watchdog (SEC) accused him of fraud. Musk and Tesla previously settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission for $40 million, then stepped down as president of the company for three years. The SEC now wants to pay the investor group $40 million plus interest. A total of 3,350 claims have been paid out of the fund. This equates to just under $12,400 per investor.
The amount to be paid is just over half of the $80 million that investors lost, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission, due to stock price volatility after the tweet. However, the amount is only a small fraction of the $12 billion in losses that investors say they suffered because of the tweet.
Court case
But in February, investors lost a lawsuit against Musk. The jury decided at the time that Musk would not have misled investors when he announced on Twitter in 2018 that he intended to take the car company he runs off-the-shelf.
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