Elon Musk has sold nearly $7 billion US worth of shares in Tesla as the billionaire gets his finances in order ahead of his court battle with Twitter.

Musk disclosed in a series of regulatory filings that he unloaded about eight million shares of his company Tesla Inc. in recent days.

“In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close and some equity partners don’t come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock,” Musk tweeted late Tuesday.

Musk is by far the largest individual shareholder in both Tesla and Twitter.

Shares of Tesla rose almost two per cent before