Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by chromas on Monday August 13 2018, @09:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the $ dept.

Musk Says 'Funding Secured' Claim Sparked by Saudi Meeting

Elon Musk said interest from Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund gave him the confidence to drop the bombshell last week that he was considering taking Tesla Inc. private. The Saudi Kingdom's Public Investment Fund had approached Musk going back almost two years about taking Tesla off the market, he wrote in a blog post Monday, confirming that the fund recently bought an almost 5 percent stake. Musk described a July 31 meeting in which the Saudi fund's managing director expressed regret that Tesla hadn't moved forward with a go-private transaction.

[...] Several investors have since sued Musk and Tesla, claiming the company's share price had been manipulated. The Securities and Exchange Commission is said to be intensifying its scrutiny of the company and its chief executive officer after having started gathering general information about Tesla and Musk's earlier public pronouncements about manufacturing goals and sales targets.

One of Tesla's biggest critics, Vertical Group analyst Gordon Johnson, read Musk's blog post as a walk-back maneuver from his "funding secured" tweet last week. He cited Musk's statement Monday that the Saudi fund's support for taking Tesla private was "subject to financial and other due diligence and their internal review process for obtaining approvals." "He is specifically stating that funding is not secured, and I think that's a big deal," Johnson, whose $93 price target on Tesla shares is the lowest among Wall Street analysts, said on Bloomberg Television. "The question then becomes, what does the SEC do here, and do the shareholders stick with him?"

Also at CNBC.

Previously: Elon Musk Considers Taking Tesla Private


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @05:30PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @05:30PM (#721440)

    Sometimes the nomenclature "short" is used to refer to just selling a stock you own. Which is different than selling a stock you don't own. If you short a stock you don't own, you are buying a contract, which is a derivative. Derivatives are sold on various markets just like stocks, and your broker will provide them mostly transparently. Typically the first time you do this, your broker will be pretty explicit about showing you the risks.

    It is important to distinguish between them. When the big banks defrauded the world economy, the way they did it was buying derivatives into consumer mutual funds they managed. Essentially they pushed fraudulent unpayable insurance claims into unwitting consumers retirement portfolios without their knowledge or consent, and then crashed the insurer so the claims could never be paid. The money John Q. Public paid into their mutual funds went into bankers bonus's, and George W. Bush may as well have underwrote the whole thing, because the SEC never prosecuted most of them.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @09:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @09:41PM (#721550)

    Sometimes the nomenclature "short" is used to refer to just selling a stock you own.

    Wow still not talking about actually just selling short a stock. Not selling a stock, not options, not futures, just short selling. It seems you have no idea what you are talking about and just keep trying to push some political point.