Elon Musk says Saudi fund could help him take Tesla private
  • 6 years ago
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has reiterated his confidence that he's able to secure enough funding to take the firm private after a July meeting with a Saudi Arabian fund.
For more on this and other news around the world we turn to our Ro Aram…
Aram… Musk has been hinting at going private for a while now… could we see it happen?

Well Mark… Musk certainly seems confident that Tesla can end its eight-year run as a publicly traded company.
In a blog post on Monday, he said Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund had purchased nearly five percent of Tesla stock and that the fund approached him multiple times over the past two years about taking the electric carmaker private.
He added that he left a meeting at the end of last month with no question that a deal could be closed.
The blog post comes about a week after Musk shocked investors with an announcement on Twitter that he was considering taking Tesla private at 420 U.S. dollars per share, valuing the firm at 72 billion dollars.
He didn't provide details on funding only saying it was secured.
That tweet put Musk under scrutiny by federal securities regulators.
They are looking into the accuracy of his tweet and whether it led to investors driving up the firm's shares by 11 percent on that day.
If that is the case, then Musk could be at risk for securities fraud if his statement wasn't entirely true.
Meanwhile, a number of investors are suing him for misleading the markets.
Musk was seeking to clarify his tweet in Monday's blog, but there is still uncertainty surrounding his claim of "secured" funding as he wrote he is still in talks with other investors concerning the go-private transaction.
The Saudi Arabian fund does have enough assets to complete the deal, but it is yet to comment on the CEO's statement.
Tesla and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission are also yet to issue a response.
Recommended