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Elon Musk continued to drip feed details of his plan to take Tesla Inc. private, saying late Monday that he’s getting advice from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and private-equity firm Silver Lake.
In a tweet late Monday California time, the electric car maker’s CEO said he’s also lined up legal advisers for the possible transaction. A Tesla spokesman said Musk’s tweet refers to his own advisers and attorneys. Tesla board members didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Controversy has swirled around Musk’s plan since the moment he announced it in a tweet a week ago, with some investors and lawyers questioning his claim to have secured funding for the move. Musk’s tweet about taking Tesla private hadn’t been cleared ahead of time with the company’s board, the New York Times reported, and the Securities and Exchange Commission is scrutinizing his statements.
Earlier Monday, Musk revealed that Saudi Arabia has long been interested in taking Tesla private, which gave him the confidence last week to tweet that he was considering the blockbuster deal. He also confirmed the country’s Public Investment Fund recently bought an almost 5 percent stake and is interested in helping take Tesla private.
The posts prolong Musk’s piecemeal approach to explaining how he’ll pull off a privatization of his money-losing automaker at a more than $70 billion market capitalization. Since the 47-year-old dropped that bombshell, he’s used social media to sporadically update investors stuck in an information vacuum.
Who’s doing what?
Adding to potential confusion over who’s doing what for whom, Reuters reported that Silver Lake is offering its assistance to Musk without compensation. Silver Lake hasn’t been hired as a financial adviser in an official capacity and isn’t currently discussing participating in the deal as an investor, Reuters reported. A Goldman Sachs representative declined to comment, and Silver Lake representatives didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
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Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund first approached Musk in early 2017 about taking Tesla off the market, he said in a blog post Monday. The Public Investment Fund is working to be part of any investor pool that emerges to take Tesla private, Bloomberg News reported on Sunday.
Funding tweet
Musk described a meeting late last month in which a managing director for the fund expressed regret that such a transaction hadn’t moved forward. “I left the July 31st meeting with no question that a deal with the Saudi sovereign fund could be closed, and that it was just a matter of getting the process moving,” Musk wrote, adding that this is why he tweeted on Tuesday that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private at $420 a share.
As Musk fills in the blanks, he’s not convincing everyone. Sydney-based Totus Capital Pty is still shorting Tesla shares and has increased its bearish bet since the executive tweeted about taking the company private, said Ben McGarry, a fund manager at the firm.
“The time has finally come for the great Tesla short,” McGarry said in a note last week. “When a CEO under extreme pressure lobs a light-on-detail privatization proposal, the potential payoff for a short position improves.”
Shares of Tesla have gained 4.2 percent since Aug. 6, the day before Musk first revealed his buyout proposal. Still, the shares are well below the $420 level at which he said existing shareholders could be bought out, underscoring investor skepticism that the CEO will be able to fund the transaction. Tesla rose 0.2 percent to $357 at 5:23 a.m. New York time in trading before U.S. exchanges opened.
Several investors have sued Musk and Tesla, claiming the company’s share price was manipulated. The SEC is said to be intensifying its scrutiny of the company and its CEO after having started gathering general information about Tesla and Musk’s earlier public pronouncements about manufacturing goals and sales targets.
The law firms Musk said he is working with are Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and & Katz, and Munger, Tolles & Olson.
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