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SEC Sends Subpoena To Tesla In Probe Over Musk's Take-Private Tweets (bloomberg.com)
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sent Tesla a subpoena regarding Elon Musk's effort to take the company private, "indicating the regulatory scrutiny of his statements have reached a more serious stage," reports Bloomberg. Last week, Musk tweeted he was considering taking Tesla off the market and had "funding secured" for the deal. From the report: Musk exposed himself to legal risk by tweeting Aug. 7 that he had the funding for a buyout. Almost a week later, the chief executive officer said the basis for his statement was conversations with Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, which first expressed interest in helping take the company private in early 2017. Tesla's board has since clarified that it hasn't received a formal proposal from Musk, who's also chairman, nor has it concluded whether going private would be advisable or feasible. Tesla may face potential regulatory challenges beyond the SEC investigation. The company probably will need approval of U.S. national security officials if Saudi Arabia finances the effort to take the company private, and President Donald Trump's administration has been stepping up scrutiny of foreign investment in American technology.
market. You lose control over your own company because you're no longer the only owner and strangers begin to have a say as well. Sharing is never good, regardless of what some people say.
That trader should return the favor and send Musk a pair of handcuffs.
The last time a car manufacturer tried its luck too much on the stock exchange (earning there intermittently more than from its production) it ended up being bought up by a competitor. Someone still remembers Porsche 'buying' Volkswagen?
This also included 'interesting' communication of the CEO to the market. Maybe Musks wants to step into Wiedekind's steps?
I'm not one to say, "I told you so", but if you look at the comments from when this story first came out, you will see I commented that his obvious attempt to manipulate stock price could get him in serious trouble with the SEC. A long thread of Musk fans and the Anonymous Coward telling me that was nonsense and nothing Musk did was improper followed. Matter of fact, the thread is still active with back-benchers arguing with me about how Musk doesn't need to do any of this because he's a billionaire and really doesn't care about the stock price of Tesla.
Well...
https://youtu.be/9AajslFuPro
Here is the thread. I told you so.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
You are welcome on my lawn.
This feels like a lifeguard going after kids for splashing. . . during a hurricane. . .
However, I do agree with the Musk critics that say he should not be the CEO of a public company. . . that is why Tesla needs to go private.
Let good engineers quietly build stuff (and occasionally vent on Twitter, without regulatory consequence) and the do-nothing CEO's of public companies continue do nothing and look good in the name of shareholder value.
I just want to drive their cars. . . the rest just seems like a silly distraction.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
I think twitter needs a feature called "executive override" that routes tweets from CEOs to through their lawyers first... and they can choose to release or suppress the tweet. Seriously... It's a billion dollar idea. I love Musk and his antics, it's entertaining as hell, but this is crossing the line.
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
Sharing is necessary, regardless of what some uneducated slackdot goofs might blurt out. (Stay the fuck off our socialist interstate highways, GOP tools. You didn't personally build that.)
Bloomberg ran an article titled Elon Musk's Funding for Tesla Wasn't So Secure where they pointed out when Musk said "funding is secured" there was no actual agreement in place. His statement being factually untrue risked causing this SEC investigation.
Shame about Elon kicking your dog.
Double whammy, because he's not just an immigrant, he's a white South African immigrant, and one old enough to have benefitted from apartheid.
If it's a request why does its name translate as "under penalty"?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Here.
Key points:
* This had been discussed with the board before the announcement
* The board agreed that the next step was to discuss with large shareholders.
* It would be unfair for the big shareholders to know of this proposal but not the small shareholders, hence a public announcement. (It isn't clear to me whether the board specifically agreed to this announcement, or whether Musk felt it was a logical consequence of the previous point.)
* "Funding secured" means the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund has been eager to do this for quite some time, although Musk would like there to be other investors too.
I feel somewhat but not completely reassured by this explanation.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
During the investigation, it will emerge that Elon had secretly changed his legal name to "Funding secured." He will argue those words were his signature, not an assertion of fact.
This always-musk-defending Rei? https://slashdot.org/~Rei
how do you know is really a she?
She doesn't exactly leave a light digital footprint. See, for example, here.
Or here: https://www.dailykos.com/user/...
He said "funding is secured"...which is open to interpretation. Musk argues that it meant that he had serious discussions with investors who indicated they were willing to pony up sufficient funds to take Tesla private. My guess is that all he has to do is produce one or more investors who say "yep, we're ready to put up X billion and we've been talking to him about this for awhile" and he is off scot-free, perhaps with an admonishment to be more careful in the future.
In all likelihood, he will take Tesla private, and most likely under the terms he sketches out in his initial tweets. I don't see how you punish a CEO for saying what he's going to do and then doing it. Say what you will about Elon Musk, but he pretty much does what he says he's going to do, no matter how fantastical it sounds...eventually.
13k comments on Daily Kos? Holy smokes -- I could be excused for thinking she spends all her spare time posting around here. That Icelandic government job must be cherry indeed.
Bloviating? Comical?
I think you left out "cherry picking" and "spewing."
First people believed that "funding (was) secured" and now people believe that a deal is being negotiated?
Nope.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
In all likelihood, he will take Tesla private, and most likely under the terms he sketches out in his initial tweets... he pretty much does what he says he's going to do, no matter how fantastical it sounds...eventually.
I don't think you can claim it until that "eventually" comes to pass. I seem to recall him promising a $35,000 full electric car, LEO launch costs of $5-6 million, and Mars one-way ticket for $200,000... none of which has happened yet.
Note how all of those are promises with actual dollar amounts. The stuff he says he'll do for X will simply not be done for X, which in cases such as reusable rockets might be fine, but not when it pertains to the stock price.
SEC sent a subpoena to Mr. Trump for manipulating the USDTRY last week with his tweet.
Eh, that's a definition in a specific statute that only applies to that statute.
As to whether or not the courts have decided this, I don't know, but given you so severely fucked up your initial assertion, I'm not terribly inclined to give your second one much consideration.
The SEC "requested* documents related to probable securities law violations by Musk some time ago. A subpoena is a demand by or on behalf of the court and you can go to jail for ignoring it.
Because it falls under "search and seizure", the fifth amendment requires probable cause or other appropriate justification under the 5th. Just as with searching a vehicle, that can happen to ways - a court can rule *ahead of time* that there is probable cause, or an officer can, in some situations, conduct a search if they have probable cause that they can show later. At very least, the SEC is dating that they have probable cause to believe there is a crime here.
Aside from the obvious manipulation charge, it is also law that corporate officers must send material information to ALL interested stockholders simultaneously, not just the ones they like. Telling favored people even fine minutes ahead of time (thereby allowing them to buy or sell before disfavored people know) is insider trading. Officers MUST make the information available to favored people, disfavored people, all stockholders, at the same time. Because he has actively blocked people he doesn't like from his Twitter feed, using that as the first place he announces material information is in violation of the law. He is at minimum technically commiting insider trading. What penalty he'll get for that we'll.hqvebto wait and see. It's clear cut insider trading when an officer of the corporation provides the information to favored people before providing it to disfavored people.
Then they aren't very consistent then, because they argue against anything else governments do.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"He also promised an all electric car with a 200+ mile range which hasn't happened yet!"
- Djinn, 2003
Who is Azealia Banks? Who is "Grimes"? Why doesn't the article identify these people who are central to its story?
Totally agree. I don't know why they aren't just teleporting the cars from California to the customer instantly. What the fuck, Tesla?
You know that the cars have to actually go from the factory to the destination where the customer receives it, right? And that they purposefully delayed some deliveries into Q3 in order to get another quarter of the full EV tax credit for customers, right?
This isn't software, it takes time to load them all up onto trucks to take them to trains, and time for those trains to move them to depots close by, time for trucks to take them from that depot to the lot where delivery happens. And then the sale is recorded. Oh, and they held delivery on many cars at the end of the quarter in order to get another quarter of tax incentives for customers, as the law is written that once you sell your 200,000th EV, you get the remainder of that quarter and the following quarter at the full credit, and then it starts to phase out. Since they held their 200,000th car to 1 July, the credit begins phasing out on 1 January.
But you probably already knew all that, and were making the most un-nuanced belligerent thin argument you can, because reality doesn't fit with your completely illogical disdain.
What price is your short position at, anyway?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Yeah, there's droves of Republicans that are always speaking out against law enforcement, prisons, military spending, and the armed forces.
No wait, those are all things they can't get enough of, and they're all done by government. You aren't even building straw men and knocking them down, you're just completely wrong.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
No, it's not open to interpretation - secured has a fairly specific meaning. (In this case, that funding is committed and available.) There is no reasonable way to extend "funding is secured" to mean "we don't actually have funding but we're in serious discussion" and still be speaking English.
0.o Punishing him for "doing what he said he was going to do"? What planet do you live on? Her on Earth he hasn't taken Tesla private, he hasn't even put it to a shareholder vote yet. And he can't do that because he hasn't filed the relevant paperwork yet... He's not being punished for "doing what he said he would do" (in fact, he hasn't been punished at all). He's being investigated for possibly saying something improper. (Words mean things, and "punished" and "investigated" are not synonyms.)
Only if he can demonstrate that such readiness existed prior to his tweet and covered the entire amount of the buyout. (That's what "funding is secured" means.)
Seriously, what is it with Musk's defenders? Their ability to create utter nonsense from thin air surpasses all belief.
Maybe... maybe not. "Going private" and "keeping existing shareholders" are mutually incompatible. He's going to have to come up with a pretty novel solution and get it past the regulators first, and that's going to be a very tall order.
Note how all of those are promises with actual dollar amounts. The stuff he says he'll do for X will simply not be done for X
"He also promised an all electric car with a 200+ mile range for under $100,000 which hasn't happened yet!"
- Djinn, 2003
Under $100,000... very impressive!
/sarcasm
"Under $100,000 would be very impressive! It'll never happen!"
- Djinn, 2003
https://www.vox.com/2018/8/16/...
I must apologize, I had assumed the person on the other end of this conversation has a brain. It seems that I've made a serious misjudgement.
"If I only had a brain ..."
- Djinn, 2018
It's not bullshit, it's how the Federal tax credit works. With Model 3 sales increasing, they were going to ship their 200,000th car in the US in June, which would mean missing 3 months of additional tax credits for customers. They already had over 80,000 vehicles sold in the US in 2016 and 2017, which doesn't include any vehicles sold previous to 2016, or the first six months of 2018 which in july had them producing 3x as many vehicles per week as in 2017.
If you think it's complete bullshit, show your math on it. I've presented a scenario where it's past plausible.
Otherwise, your post amounts to "hater gonna hate" and adds no value whatsoever.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
See how smart Page & Brin were; they got a smart CEO to kick off their billion-$ company instead of taking over the reins at the start. See how stupid and immature Kalanick got towards the end of his tenure. Musk is doing the same thing, he's on the exact same footsteps, and like Trump tweeting shit he shouldn't be, Glad I sold off my Tesla stocks last year & cancelled my registration also (and when I heard about the Boring company, I didnt have any doubts; this was a madman who also took down his 'open source' Loop after telling others to build it)
There are plenty who rant about any regulations, like DUI, about driving on the public roads. Plenty who think that herp derp I'll do it myself herp derp gun taped under the dining table herp derp.
Already privatized. How can you not know that? Been spending some time at Club Fed?
Those are the same thing, but herp derp bump stocks!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
LynnwoodRooster, kind of sad to see someone with:
an EE background,
that designs speakers,
has over a dozen patents,
knows Mandarin,
lived in China for 4 years,
and is over 50 years
degrade themselves like you are doing because they think this will never impact their Slashdot account. . .
You may have gotten away with this in the past. . . you will not this time.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
LynnwoodRooster, like a true Trump supporter, you display the ability to fabricate lies almost as fast as I can programmatically extract facts from your Slashdot posts. . .
By the way, the fact that you suspect that someone would actually fabricate a $50K car purchase is pretty telling of your own financial situation. . . I would think an EE designer of smart speakers would be too financially well off to be so impressed by such a small purchase. . . but we all have seen your level of financial knowledge, so I guess that explains it. . . (By the way, the median house value in Ventura, CA is 600K. . . do you live in a cardboard box, or something?)
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
LynnwoodRooster, according to you, I have issues with poor people, but, at the same time, I cannot afford a $50K car and have to lie about owning one? Are you experiencing dementia like your "dear leader", Trump?
Perhaps I can analyze your posts for declining cognition and convince you to get some treatment?
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!