Elon Musk sells $6.9 billion of Tesla to avoid Twitter fire sale

Elon Musk offloaded $6.9 billion of stock in Tesla, the billionaire’s biggest sale on record, saying he wanted to avoid a last-minute selloff of the electric carmaker’s shares in the event he is forced to go ahead with his aborted deal to buy Twitter.

Tesla’s chief executive officer sold about 7.92 million shares on Aug. 5, according to a series of regulatory filings that landed after U.S. markets closed Tuesday. As speculation mounted over the reason for the disposal, Musk responded in a series of late night tweets, saying he wanted to avert an emergency sale of stock if he is compelled to complete the $44 billion takeover of Twitter, which he walked away from last month.