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Elon Musk’s test opens a hole in the Tesla CEO’s often puzzling mind: Here’s what we’ve discovered so far


The trial, centered on a pair of tweets announcing that Musk received money for it Tesla private in 2018, brought the 51-year-old billionaire into a federal courtroom in San Francisco for three days to testify, which opened a hole in his often confusing mind.

Musk, ai now owns the Twitter service which he deploys as his loudspeaker, usually a contrarian study of about eight hours standing in the stands. The electric carmaker’s CEO is facing a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of Tesla shareholders after Musk posted a tweet about the company’s acquisition but it didn’t. happen.

Through both his testimony and the evidence given around it, Musk is seen as impulsive, rude, belligerent and despises anyone who questions his motives as a game-changing entrepreneur who inspired comparisons with the late Apple co-founder, Steve Jobs.

At other times, Musk seems like the visionary whose supporters hail him — an intrepid rebel who, by his own estimates, has raised more than $100 billion. la from investors. They have been well rewarded for his leadership of pioneering companies including PayPal in digital payments, Tesla in electric vehicles and space in a rocket ship.

“It’s relatively easy for me to get investment support because my track record is extremely good,” Musk commented humorously.

But his be confident in your abilities to get the money he wants to pursue his plan is one reason he find myself in court. The three-week trial will continue on Tuesday and head for jury deliberations on Friday.

Here’s what to know so far:

PLANT VARIETIES

Evidence and testimony shows that Musk began considering taking Tesla private in 2017 so he wouldn’t have to deal with the headaches and distractions of running a publicly traded company.

Following a July 31, 2018 meeting with a top representative from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, Musk sent a letter to Tesla’s board outlining why he wanted to invest. personify this automaker at $420 a share – about 20% more than its stock price. at that time.

Musk is serious enough to discuss the pros and cons with Michael Dellwho underwent a public-to-private transition in 2013 when he led a $25 billion acquisition of the personal computer company that bears his name, according to trial evidence.

Troubled Tweets

The crux of the case revolved around an August 7, 2018 tweet in which Musk stated “guaranteed funding” to privatize Tesla. Musk abruptly tweeted a few minutes before boarding a private jet after being informed that the Financial Times was coming soon publish a story that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund spent about $2 billion buying a 5% stake in Tesla to diversify their interests beyond oil, according to his testimony.

Amid widespread confusion about whether Musk has Twitter the account was hacked or he was joking, hours later Musk followed up with another tweet suggests an impending deal.

musk protect original tweet as a well-intentioned move to make sure all Tesla investors know that the automaker may be ending eight years later as a public company.

“I have no bad motives,” Musk testified. “My intention is to do the right thing for all shareholders.”

Guhan Subramanian, a Harvard business and law professor hired as an expert for shareholder attorneys, derided Musk’s method of announcing a potential acquisition as an “extreme outlier” “There’s a lot of potential for conflict.

Subramanian testified: “The risk is that Mr. Musk has timed his (managerial acquisition) proposal to serve his own interests rather than the interests of the company.

WHERE’S THE MONEY?

There is another problem that threatens to weaken Musk’s defenses. He did not finance his proposed deal or even determine the amount required to make it happen, based on testimony from Musk, other witnesses and other evidence.

That’s one reason US District Judge Edward Chen decided last year that Musk’s 2018 tweets are wrong and instructed the jury to see them that way.

It also led regulators to accuse Musk of misleading investors with tweets, leading to settle 40 million dollars with the US Securities and Exchange Commission also asked Musk to step down as chairman of Tesla.

Chen ruled that the 2018 settlement, in which Musk did not admit wrongdoing and has since lamented the implementation, could not be referred to the jury.

Musk testified that he believed he had secured an oral commitment to provide whatever funds were needed for the acquisition of Tesla during a face-to-face meeting on July 31, 2018 with Yasir al-Rumayyan, Saudi Arabia’s wealth fund governor.

That was reinforced in testimony from former Tesla chief financial officer Deepak Ahuja, who was at the discussions and gave al-Rumayyan a half-hour tour of a Tesla factory.

But a text message al-Rumayyan sent to Musk after the “financial security” tweet suggested that discussions about the Saudi fund funding a private acquisition were preliminary.

“I want to hear your plan, Elon, and the financial calculations to make it happen,” al-Rumayyan wrote to Musk, according to a copy submitted as evidence during the trial.

Musk framed al-Rumayyan’s text as an attempt to back away from his earlier commitment. He also confirmed the Saudi fund had made a “clear commitment” to finance the acquisition.

CONTROL MONEY

Following his 2018 tweets, Musk managed to raise the money needed to acquire Tesla with the help of Egon Durban, co-CEO of the private equity firm Silver Lake, which helped funded the acquisition of Dell in 2013. Musk also invited Dan Dees, a top executive with Goldman bookan investment banking firm that has worked closely with Tesla.

In the testimony, both Durban and Dees discussed the attempt to raise money to acquire Tesla to a variety of potential investors including two Chinese companies, Alibaba and Tencent, as well as Google in the documents was originally codenamed “Project Turbo”, then “Project Titanium”.

According to the documents, the acquisition would require between $20 billion and $70 billion — funding that was never close to being raised, both Durban and Dees testified, largely because Musk canceled the proposal. announced the privatization of Tesla on August 24, 2018. After consulting with shareholders.

Tesla shares are now worth eight times what they were then, after adjusting for two stock splits.

Musk still thinks he might have gotten the money he wanted, and that even if there was a shortfall, he could make up any shortfall by selling some of his stock in SpaceX due to a lack of money. privately held. That’s the strategy Musk used when he bought Twitter for $44 billion, except that he sold about $23 billion of his stock in Tesla.

Durban and Dees both testified that they had no doubts about the amount of acquisition money that could be raised – former Tesla chief Antonio Gracias, repeated.

“He was the Michael Jordan of fundraising,” Gracias testified.




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