Elon Musk sells $4B in Tesla stock to fund Twitter takeover
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In a series of SEC filings published on Thursday evening, it was revealed that Elon Musk sold nearly $4B worth of Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) stock to fund his $44B deal for taking Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) private. The sales took place on Tuesday and Wednesday, with blocks of stock being sold at prices between $872 to $999 per share. "No further TSLA sales planned after today," Musk tweeted after the filings became public (the 4.4M shares sold equate to 2.6% of his stake in Tesla).
Bigger picture: Musk has promised to chip in $21B of personal equity for the Twitter (TWTR) deal, with the rest of the cash coming from investment banks (after convincing them that Twitter (TWTR) produced enough cash flow to service the debt). $13B in loans will be secured against Twitter and a $12.5B margin loan tied to his Tesla (TSLA) stock, making Musk America's most leveraged CEO. Since banks require a bigger cushion for borrowing against high-beta stocks like Tesla (TSLA), Musk will need to pledge about $65B in Tesla shares -or about a quarter of his current total - for the loan, on top of existing facilities. 
"Pledging of shares by executives is considered a significant corporate governance risk," said Jun Frank, managing director at ISS Corporate Solutions. "If an executive with significant pledged ownership position fails to meet the margin call, it could lead to sales of those shares, which can trigger a sharp share drop in stock price. This exposes shareholders to significant stock price risk due to an executive's personal financing decisions."
In terms of Tesla: Shares have already fallen 15% this week as investors fret over Musk's stock sales and how much time he'll be able to allocate to Tesla (TSLA) while being involved with Twitter's (TWTR) operations and running SpaceX (SPACE). At the end of last year, Musk also sold about 15.8M of Tesla shares, worth about $16B, divesting 10% of his stake in the EV maker to help pay a reported $11B tax bill. News of "no more Tesla sales" is helping the stock recover this morning, with shares advancing 4% to $913 in premarket trading on Friday.