Tesla CEO Elon Musk effectively has made a personal profit of more than $80 million from a fine the automaker paid to federal securities regulators.
In October 2018, Musk bought $20 million worth of Tesla stock as a way to reimburse the company for a $20 million fine related to his tweet about having "funding secured" to take Tesla private. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission determined that Musk had exaggerated about the failed go-private plan.
The stock was worth about $300 a share at the time and has since risen to more than $1,500 a share. That makes the additional shares he bought to cover the cost of the fine worth more than $100 million. Even subtracting the $20 million that Musk also had to pay himself as part of a settlement with the SEC, the matter ended up being highly profitable for him.
Of course, the amount he made buying stock because of the SEC fine is a pittance relative to the $2.4 billion worth of stock options he soon could be entitled to receive, as part of an unprecedented compensation package that eventually may be worth up to $50 billion. Tesla's market cap briefly eclipsed the combined value of Toyota Motor Corp., Volkswagen Group and Hyundai Motor Co. in recent months.
