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Shareholders sue Elon Musk over Twitter stake disclosure
14 Apr, 2022 / 11:22 am / OMNES Media LLC

Source: https://me.mashable.com/

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Mashable: When Musk bought his first Twitter shares in January, the complaint claims that by March 14th, he owned more than 5% of the company.

In a new turn of events, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, is being sued by a Twitter shareholder in a federal securities class action lawsuit for failing to disclose his 5% investment in the social media business. In the plaintiff's view, the delay permitted Musk to buy the additional Twitter stock at a lower price and defraud Twitter stockholders out of increased profits.

'All investors who sold or otherwise disposed of Twitter, Inc. assets between March 24, 2022, and April 1, 2022, inclusive.'" The case was filed in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday by Marc Bain Rasella

When Musk bought his first Twitter shares in January, the complaint claims that by March 14th, he owned more than 5% of the company. Schedule 13s must be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) within 10 days of exceeding the 5% threshold. After he had accumulated a 9.1 percent stake in Twitter, Musk reportedly filed the paperwork.

Shares of Twitter climbed from a closing price of $39.91 on April 1, 2022, to a closing price of $49.97 on April 4, 2022, when Musk finally filed the required Schedule 13, effectively revealing his ownership stake in the company, according to the lawsuit.

According to the lawsuit, Musk was able to artificially hold the price of Twitter shares down and buy it at a premium by keeping his growing ownership in Twitter covert.

He purchased 9.2 percent of the company's stock on April 4, Twitter verified. Following a series of tweets from Tesla executive Elon Musk wondering if Twitter was dying, if the firm should transform its San Francisco headquarters into a homeless shelter, and whether the "w" in Twitter should be erased, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal reversed his stance earlier this week.