World richest man, Elon Musk, has said he was joking about buying English football club, Manchester United and he isn’t in the market for any sport team.
After earlier tweeting that he was purchasing the storied club in a thread joking about his political allegiances, the Tesla Inc. chief executive officer walked back from the claim about four hours later, just after midnight New York time.
Musk has a track record of using Twitter to make jokes and troll the media, which follows his tweets closely.
The billionaire has also run afoul of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, most infamously for tweets in 2018 about taking Tesla private. That led to securities fraud charges, and a settlement that included appointing a “Twitter sitter” to approve Musk’s Tesla-related tweets.
More recently, he has drawn scrutiny from regulators over a May 17 tweet that his $44 billion takeover bid for Twitter Inc. “cannot move forward.”
Musk backed away from the purchase last month, spurring a lawsuit from the company to make him complete the deal.
The latest tweets, even though Musk specified they were a joke and were made when US markets were closed, could potentially also attract regulatory attention, given that Manchester United securities are listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
“When someone in his position makes comments about buying an entity, people start speculating: ‘is he joking, not joking, half-joking?’” said Hui Chen, an ethics and compliance consultant who served as the first compliance counsel expert at the US Department of Justice.
“His actions have major impact on markets and he really needs to be cognizant about the potential implications,” he added.
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