Tesla Receives Subpoena Over Elon Musk Privatisation Tweets
Elon Musk’s itchy fingers appear to have landed him in hot water once again, after posting a Tweet saying he was considering taking Tesla private. The social media post saw the electric car company’s value soar as share prices spiked by ten per cent off the back of it. However, the proverbial hit the fan when it emerged that neither Musk nor Tesla had actually secured the funding needed to come off the stock exchange.
That was on August 7 and since then the US Securities and Exchange Commission has subpoenaed Tesla based on information given by one individual close to the case. The SEC has been forced to act after two putative class-action suits were filed against the company.
The reason: Mr Musk’s funding claims are alleged to have been of the misleading sort - something the SEC doesn’t look kindly on. Bob Pozen, formerly of the SEC, is quoted by The Financial Times as saying: “From the SEC’s point of view, it’s one thing if he (Musk) has spoken rationally…But we can’t allow somebody to say they have something nailed down for this big a transaction and then they haven’t.”
So what next? In the meantime, Musk has tried to clear up the confusion, and apparently show people how serious he actually is about going private by claiming to be working with Goldman Sachs, private equity company Silver Lake and others.
Teslas’ board of directors is also understood to have sought legal advice and will retain their independent financial adviser to assess any potential Musk plan.
By Jason Craig
Comments
Musk really does seem to be the Trump of the car world.
Especially in the fact people seem to feel the need to post about his every action
“Musk tweeted he likes Chocolate!”
“Musk went to the movies with his family”
“Musk walked two steps”
“Musk breathed”
“Musk went night night”
It’s really just a free post that’s sure to garner clicks.
If social media was around in the ‘50s and ‘60s, almost everyone would’ve hated Enzo Ferrari due to some of the bad press. But he left a mark in automotive history, and I believe Musk might do something similar.
Except he can’t make a profit lol
Except that musk could litterally do anything and get paid for it
I honestly think the guy gets a bad rap. I mean, yea he has his moments, but most are probably out of sheer frustration.
Absolutely. And CT continues to play him up as a psycho madman that somehow got his hands on a car company.
Tesla doesn’t make profit, his production plans for Model 3 failed, Falcon fails pretty much every time, Tesla employes say work conditions are terrible. But yeah, media just gives bad rap. lol
The smart thing to to would be to delegate management of his social network accounts to a responsible and trusted PR person within the company.
Am I still the only one who thinks Twitter is childish/unprofessional to begin with? Seems like more often than not it does more harm than good anyway… especially when it comes to world leaders, celebrities, and business moguls.
When you’ve watched enough suits to fully understand this topic
Sounds like they are actually serious about it… So not really misleading
Misleading because everyone thought it’d be happening soon because of the tweets, when they don’t have the funds yet
Let’s face it though, the stupid people are the ones that make financial decisions based off tweets
You wouldn’t believe what shallow incidents are enough to fluctuate the market. In comparison a tweet is almost a solid info
Am i the only one that had to google subpoena?
I’m surprised CT didn’t clarify on it in the article. After all, this is car throttle, not law throttle. People like us know what a hydraulic roller lifter is, but don’t expect us to even correctly pronounce subpoena without looking it up first, haha
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Twitter fingers
I’ll need a chat with a lawyer and/or businessman before I can understand what’s going on here. So Musk wanted to buy his company off the shareholders or something? But then didn’t have enough money to do so? Other than him being broke, I don’t see the problem here.
Future lawyer here. Privatisation here means that Tesla is getting of the stock market, as the stock market is considered ‘public’ since the public can invest in the companies that are represented on the market. So Tesla has to buy back its shares for that to happen.
The actual problem is that investors saw an opportunity to make profit, as the buyback was indicated/revealed/rumored to be at 420 per share, aka much more than what the actual share is valued at. This in turn probably encouraged investors to invest more in Tesla - and Tesla’s stock rose by quite a bit. When Musk then specified he wasn’t near ready yet they were understandably pretty pissed off.
I’m not 100% sure but I think that’s the gist of it.