Tesla Inc Chief Executive Elon Musk’s initial 9% stake purchase in Twitter Inc is being probed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), The Information reported on Thursday.
The FTC is looking into whether Musk complied with an antitrust reporting requirement when he bought his stake in the social media company in early April, the report said, citing people with knowledge of the situation.
The focus of the inquiry is whether Musk bought the stake to influence Twitter’s management or if he looked to be a passive shareholder, according to the report.
Twitter said it did not have a comment on the report, while the FTC declined to comment.
The world’s richest person had in his April 4 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission characterized his stake as a passive one.
He later offered to buy the company for $54.20 per share in cash, which Twitter agreed to earlier this week.
Source: Business-Standard