Elon Musk sells Tesla shares for about $4 billion

Elon Musk, the head of electric car maker Tesla, has sold about $4 billion in shares in his company, according to the US Stock Exchange yesterday, more than a week after acquiring Twitter in a $44 billion deal.

And documents from the US Securities and Exchange Commission showed that Musk, who financed a large part of the Twitter deal through Tesla, sold 19.5 million shares of the company, about 3.95 billion dollars.

Musk acquired Twitter and fired its top executives in late October, after a period of back-and-forth between him and the influential social media company.

The world's richest man tried to renege on his deal with Twitter after accepting his bid to buy the social network in April, claiming in July that he had been misled about the number of fake accounts, allegations the company rejected.

After Musk sought to terminate the deal, Twitter sued him to oblige him to do so.

With his trial date approaching, Musk returned to revive the acquisition plan.

Musk's decision to pull Twitter from the stock exchange after buying it allowed him to make major changes quickly, but it also put the company on greater debt burden, a risky option for a company that loses money every day.

At the beginning of November, Musk announced that he would charge a fee of $8 per month on user accounts verified with a blue tick to fight trolls on the network and improve revenue.

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