How do you seize billions of dollars of stock without affecting share prices?
They could contact the broker holding his shares and restrain them, order them sold, and collect the proceeds.
They could seize and sell at auction the real property of any of his businesses. SpaceX rockets? Office chairs? Servers? Anything.
All of this enforcement costs money. Twitter would account for the money spent seizing assets and charge those expenses to Musk as well.
Assets seized in this way (including stock) are often sold for much less than they're ideally worth. It's Musk's problem. Twitter would be empowered to seize seize seize until they've raised enough cash to cover the judgement plus expenses.
They could not, because he does not own those businesses outright. Doing so would violate the other owners rights. They can seize his shares in SpaceX, but not SpaceX property.
But the end result is always the same. You can either voluntarily liquidate and pay your judgements or you can have someone else do it for you.
Why should the court or Twitter care if they end up converting 10x more of Elon's stock to cash?
I guess some day traders would get rich (and people that had to sell for the day or so when the stock tanked would take a bath), but that's the biggest problem I can come up with.
You’re acting like the asset value at all matters to the courts.
Elon and Twitter have a contract. Elon wants out; Twitter doesn't want to let him out; the contract only has limited conditions to allow Elon out. The court is simply deciding which of two options is the case:
1. Elon's reasons are valid; he gets out of the contract for a $1B payment.
2. Elon's reasons are not valid; he has to satisfy the contract and pay $54.20/share for Twitter.
If the judge decides in favor of #2, it is Elon's responsibility to come up with the money. (If he doesn't do so willingly, someone court-appointed will step in and do it for him.) If that tanks Tesla, that has nothing to do with the court.
Now, Tesla shareholders can sue Elon for getting the company into this pile of stank....
Trying to argue, in court, that you are entitled to have your investment insulated from loss due the primary owner selling it?
Why should that be a concern?
The drop in share prices as you do this is not your concern.
But hey, we've got beanbags and a playstation.
