NEW YORK: Elon Musk continued selling Tesla Inc. shares for a fifth straight week, coming closer to his pledge to offload 10% of his holding.
The billionaire founder sold another 934,091 shares for some $963 million to pay for taxes on the exercise of 2.2 million options, according to regulatory filings dated Thursday. That brings the total to about 11 million shares offloaded since he asked his Twitter followers last month whether he should get rid of one-10th of his Tesla stake.
While the Tesla stock reductions and options transactions started following the online survey, Musk had already said in September he would likely exercise a big chunk of his contracts toward the end of the year and had put in place a trading plan. To achieve the 10% threshold -- representing 17 million shares without factoring in his exercisable options -- he would need to get rid of another 6 million shares.
Tesla shares have fallen 18% from a peak on NovEMBER 4 as Musk offloaded his shares. He remains the world’s richest person, with a $266 billion fortune that has grown by $110 billion this year alone, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
