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Twitterati respond to Elon Musk’s poll, want him to offload 10% stake in Tesla

57.9% of Elon Musk’s followers on Twitter want him to sell 10 percent of his Tesla holdings.

Should Tesla CEO Elon Musk offload stake in the company? This was a question Musk himself posted as a poll on Twitter. Guess what the Twitterati said?

As much as 57.9 per cent of 4people who took the poll wanted Musk to sell about 10 per cent of his Tesla holdings. 

It was on Saturday that Elon Musk called upon his followers on Twitter to let them know whether he should offload 10 per cent of his stocks in the electric car major. He had, in his tweet which spoke of this, also stated that he would abide by whatever the result of his poll would be.

His tweet also made it known to the Twitter universe that he had only stock in his company and that he never drew any salary or bonus.

Musk tweet asks followers to take stock sale poll

The tweet came as a follow up to accusations that he was avoiding tax and that he was making gains by not paying taxes. The proposal for offloading of a 10 per cent stake was a means to make himself clear on that.

It may be recalled that Musk had some time back made it known that he would have looked at a large number of stock options over the next three months and that it would create a big tax bill. Selling some of his stock could free up funds to pay the taxes, he had clarified.

The Saturday Twitter poll followed his proclamation that he would sell $6 billion in Tesla stock and donate it to the United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP). The condition he had set was that the UN WFP should have to come clear on how it would spend the money. The accusation, as mentioned earlier, against him that he was preferring tax avoidance even after being so rich has prompted all these developments.

Musk holds around 170.5 Mn shares in Tesla

If one looks deeper into how rich the Tesla boss is, it would be clear that Elon Musk’s shareholding in Tesla stood at around 170.5 million shares, as of June 30 this year. So offloading 10 per cent could translate the amount as around $21 billion.

It remains to be seen how Elon Musk would put the poll result to practice. If he abides by the call of his followers, we might get to hear of Musk’s 10 per cent stock sale in Tesla soon.

By Daniel Oberhaus – Self-photographed, https://www.flickr.com/photos/163370954@N08/46339127625/, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77017161

Sanjeev Ramachandran

A journalist with 23 years of experience, Sanjeev has worked with reputed media houses such as Business Standard, The Ne More »
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