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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.
That trader should return the favor and send Musk a pair of handcuffs.
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!
And this is laissez-faire capitalism at its finest. Only in America would you get a weird look for having government intervention at this stage.
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.
Yup. He should've just kept it private, if he could've. Going public should only be used A. As an exit strategy or B. As a last resort to raise cash.
I don't respond to AC's.
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.
Well, sort of - but you went to the stock market to *get other people's money*, it's not at all unreasonable to expect them to have some say in how you conduct yourself.
If you want to retain full control, as you say, don't take it public. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.
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.
SEC sent a subpoena to Mr. Trump for manipulating the USDTRY last week with his tweet.
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."
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?
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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.