JPMorgan Sues Tesla For $162 Million Over Elon Musk’s Tweets
Elon Musk’s bonkers Twitter behavior has landed Tesla in hot water yet again. This time, it’s with JPMorgan Chase, which sued the auto manufacturer in Manhattan federal court on Monday for a hefty $162 million over the chaos that ensued following the Tesla CEO’s now-infamous “funding secured” tweet back in 2018.
The full lawsuit—which you can read for yourself here—stems from a 2014 arrangement between Tesla and JPMorgan that saw the bank buy a set of “stock warrants” from the automaker. The general gist of these warrants is that they give an investor (like JPMorgan) the right to buy shares of a given company (like Tesla) at a predetermined price on a predetermined date.
In this case, the warrants that JPMorgan bought in 2014 were set to expire in June and July of 2021. When that deadline hit, the lawsuit explains, one of two things was expected to happen. If the summer deadline came around and Tesla’s stock price was lower than the strike price ($560.64), Tesla would leave the deal without owing anything to JPMorgan. But if the stock price was higher than the strike price, then Tesla would be obligated to fork over a certain number of shares, or a certain sum of cash.
