Musk Faces Billions in Compensation to Investors: "Deliberately Drove Down Twitter Stock Price"

"Not a Deliberate Scheme... Cleared of Fraud Charges"

A verdict has been reached stating that Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, must compensate investors for deliberately driving down the share price during the acquisition of X (formerly Twitter).

On March 20 (local time), the Associated Press and other outlets reported that a jury at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California found in a civil lawsuit between Musk and then-Twitter investors that investors were misled by Musk’s posts claiming “Twitter is rife with spam and fake accounts.” However, the jury found Musk not guilty on certain fraud charges, concluding that he did not act with a deliberate plan to deceive investors.

This lawsuit challenged Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. The jury determined that Musk must pay compensation of $3 to $8 per share per day (approximately 4,500 to 12,000 won). NBC News estimated that, since this was a class action filed by both institutional and individual investors, the total amount Musk may have to pay could reach several billion dollars.

In April 2022, Musk signed a contract to acquire Twitter for $54.20 per share (about 81,000 won), totaling $44 billion (about 64 trillion won). However, he suddenly posted that he was “temporarily holding the acquisition pending details supporting the calculation that spam and fake accounts represent less than 5% of users.” He cited Twitter’s alleged misrepresentation of fake account numbers as the reason for potentially abandoning the acquisition.

This caused significant concern among investors, and the share price dropped to around $30. That same year, Twitter filed a lawsuit seeking to enforce the original agreement. Just before the trial was set to begin, Musk completed the acquisition under the original terms.

Meanwhile, on March 10, the U.S. business media outlet Forbes announced that Musk ranked first on its 40th annual list of the world’s billionaires. Musk’s assets were estimated at $839 billion (about 1,230 trillion won). For the first time in Forbes’ history, Musk’s net worth exceeded $800 billion, earning him the top spot among global billionaires for the second consecutive year. However, it was reported that a significant portion of his wealth remains tied up in Tesla stock.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.