Griffin Calls Musk’s Tesla Poll a ‘Whole Different World’

(Bloomberg) -- Citadel’s Ken Griffin said he was shocked that fellow billionaire Elon Musk polled social media users about whether to sell 10% of his stake in Tesla Inc. 

“I never thought we’d let our ownership stakes be dictated by a poll on Twitter,” the hedge fund manager said Wednesday at the New York Times DealBook conference. “We live in a whole different world.” 

Shares of Musk’s electric-vehicle maker tumbled after the Nov. 6 tweet. While the stock rebounded somewhat on Wednesday, it’s down about 13% this week. Musk framed the idea as a response to debates over how to tax the wealthy.

More than half of the respondents said he should sell. 

Griffin, for his part, said he likes to see companies controlled by their founders, and that he doesn’t want tax policy to drive “great entrepreneurs” like Musk out of their roles. 

There are trade-offs, he said, between tax policy and innovation.

“It may feel really good to soak the rich,” Griffin said. “I think you’d rather have your iPhone.”

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