New York (EFE) the stock company, something that never happened.
The nine-person jury delivered the verdict in just two hours after retiring to deliberate this afternoon, after a civil trial that has lasted three weeks and in which it was decided whether the magnate misled investors with his controversial messages on Twitter, according to local media reported.
This is a victory for Musk, who testified throughout the process to ensure that he did have enough capital to take the company public thanks to commitments from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund and his own participation in SpaceX, and also pointed out that he had no bad intentions towards investors.
“I am considering taking Tesla public at $420. Secured financing”, said the tweet under scrutiny in the case, in which Musk referred to the price per share that he could offer in the operation and that would have valued the company at around 72,000 million dollars.
Then he added another message that read: “Investor support is confirmed. The only reason this is not certain is that it depends on the shareholder vote.”
Following the messages, Tesla’s share price rose sharply, then fell a few days later when the media began reporting that it did not actually have that funding secured.
The trial against Musk
Musk seemed to start at a disadvantage, since the judge, Edward Chen, had found that these statements were false and misleading, but the jury had to determine if it was those messages that affected Tesla’s price, the possible intention of the defendant and the cost they had for the plaintiffs.
First, the jury had to decide whether the messages published by Musk misled investors and then calculate the economic impact they had, so that by rejecting that first assumption, the businessman is saved from having to pay millions of dollars in compensation to the plaintiffs.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the panel said investors did not provide sufficient evidence to support their contention that Musk caused them harm by writing the tweets about the potential IPO.
«The jury has understood the correct thing. That’s all I’m going to say,” commented Alex Spiro, one of Musk’s and Tesla’s lawyers – also accused – after the verdict was announced, while the investor defense said they were considering their next steps, according to local media.
The tweets already led the US Securities and Exchange Commission in 2018 to accuse Musk of fraud and the businessman accepted a fine of 20 million dollars as a sanction and leave for at least three years as president of the board of directors. administration of the company, although he continued to be its CEO.
