Technology The jury unanimously agrees with Elon Musk in the trial for his...

The jury unanimously agrees with Elon Musk in the trial for his 2018 tweet about the Tesla IPO

An American jury has determined that Elon MuskCEO of Tesla, and the company are not responsible for misleading investors about the company’s IPO.

Two hours after beginning the deliberations, the jury of 9 people has issued a unanimous verdict this Saturday the 4th, with which he considers that the plaintiffs have not been able to demonstrate manipulation and deception by Musk, who made a series of posts on Twitter in August 2018.

“Thank God, the wisdom of the people has prevailed! I deeply appreciate that the jury unanimously declared not guilty in the case,” Musk, who was not present in court when the verdict was pronounced, celebrated on the social network, reports Reuterswhich points to Tesla shares rising 1.6% in after-hours trading following the decision.

Is has left investors “disappointed”, who are “considering next steps”in the words of his lawyer, Nicholas Porritt, in a statement.

The trial is the result of a class action lawsuit filed by Tesla shareholders, who believe that Musk manipulated the market with his message and caused them significant losses of money, estimated at 12,000 million dollars (about 11,000 million euros, at current exchange rates) for an economist hired by them.

In it Tweet, Musk claimed to be “considering” taking Tesla public paying 420 dollars (which would now be about 385 euros) per share and maintained that he had “secured financing”. “Investor support is confirmed. The only reason all of this is not certain is that it depends on shareholder vote,” she continued to tweet for several hours.

This provoked the anger of the shareholders, who lost money —the shares fell up to 10% hours after the market closed—, as well as an investigation and lawsuit by the SEC (US Securities and Exchange Commission), which accused Musk of stock fraud and requested his disbarment, although they later reached a conciliation agreement.

Elon Musk just took the stand in a trial over his “funding secured” tweet: 8 notable quotes from his testimony

“Whether it’s the stock markets or a football game, the rules must be fair and they must apply to everyone. And this case, ultimately, It’s about whether the rules that apply to everyone else should also apply to Elon Musk.”Porritt had warned during the closing arguments, collects Business Insider.

For his part, Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, has acknowledged that Musk’s “funding secured” tweet was “technically inaccurate”, but has wanted to downplay its importance by describing it as “a poor choice of words”. “Just because it is a bad tweet does not make it a fraud,” he argued in court, according to Reuters.

However, Musk, who has spent almost 9 hours on the stand during a 3-week trial, has said he believes the tweets were true: according to him, he had the commitment of a Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund, which he later retracted. , and thought he had sold enough SpaceX shares to finance the deal.

Elon Musk has had to choose between Tesla or Twitter: he has kept the first

A contrary verdict could have cost Musk billionswho during the trial has expressed doubts about the potential impact of his tweets on Tesla’s shares: “Just because I tweet something does not mean that people believe it or will act accordingly.”

“Obviously, there is a limit if you have 240 characters to what you can say. Obviously, you can be much more verbiage in a legal presentation and everyone on Twitter understands that,” he argued.

Although the tweets had to be considered “false”, as ruled, the jury had to decide if they were “material”, US District Judge Edward Chen had recalled before the trial. In stock market parlance, that means what was under consideration is whether Musk’s remarks were significant enough to influence investors’ trading decisions, he explains. Business Insider.

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