Twitter, Tesla and the mad genius of Elon Musk

There aren’t many businessmen like Elon Musk. After announcing his intention to pull out of his $44bn takeover of Twitter (US: TWTR) - a move which is set to cause considerable pain to the company’s shareholders - Musk took to the social media platform to poke fun at the situation. The tweet - which shows him laughing at the fact that Twitter’s lawyers are trying to force him to go through with the deal - has been liked 1m times.

It’s not the first time Musk has stretched the boundaries of the behaviour expected for a company chief executive. In 2018 he was forced to pay significant fines to the US securities and exchange commission (SEC) after he tweeted that he had secured the funding to take Tesla (US: TSLA) private at $420 per share - a major premium. The incident culminated in a court ruling that stated Musk “recklessly made the statements with knowledge as to their falsity." Less than two years later he wiped $14bn off Tesla’s (US: TSLA) value when he tweeted that the stock price was too high “imo”.Tesla's share price has climbed steadily in the last few years