Elon Musk cheated Twitter shareholders out of more than $150 million by waiting too long to disclose his growing stake in the company as he prepared a takeover bid, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission claimed in a lawsuit filed days before the Trump administration takes over.
The agency’s complaint, which was immediately disputed by a lawyer for Musk, accuses the billionaire of failing to promptly report that he had amassed more than 5% of the social media platform’s stock in early 2022 — a revelation that would have sent the stock’s price up.
"Because Musk failed to timely disclose his beneficial ownership, he was able to make these purchases from the unsuspecting public at artificially low prices,” the regulator said in its civil suit filed in federal court in Washington, DC. "Investors who sold Twitter common stock during this period did so at artificially low prices and thus suffered substantial economic harm.”
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