A few days after Elon Musk shocked
Wall Street and investors by tweeting that he would take Tesla private at
$420 a share, speculation is still high on who could invest in what could be
the biggest-ever buyout deal. One of the potential financiers of the
US$82-billion taking-Tesla-private deal could be Saudi Arabia’s sovereign
wealth fund Public Investment Fund (PIF), which was said to have acquired
just below 5 percent in Tesla before Musk about his idea to make the EV maker
private.
PIF is in talks to take part in any pool of investors that would fund the
buyout, Bloomberg News reported
on Sunday, citing people with knowledge of the Saudi fund’s plans. PIF explores
ways on how it could be involved in the possible going-private deal, for
which Musk prefers to have a larger group of investors instead of just one or
two large stakeholders, Bloomberg’s sources say.
According to those sources, PIF’s talks started before Musk tweeted last
Tuesday about considering taking Tesla private. The Saudi fund sees its stake
in Tesla as a strategic way to hedge against oil, according to Bloomberg’s
sources who noted that PIF hasn’t made any decision yet on if it would
increase its interest in Tesla.
However, according to sources familiar with the plans who spoke to Reuters,
PIF has not yet expressed interest in investing in a buyout, despite the fact
that it has now become a minority shareholder in Tesla.
Musk’s email to Tesla employees posted on Tesla’s
website on the day of the tweet explained the rationale for the
going-private plan, but Musk has yet to prove that the “funding secured” part
of his was true.
On the day following the tweet, Tesla’s Board of Directors members Brad
Buss, Robyn Denholm, Ira Ehrenpreis, Antonio Gracias, Linda Johnson Rice, and
James Murdoch said
that Elon Musk had opened a discussion with the board in the previous week
about taking the company private. Related:
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“This included discussion as to how being private could better serve
Tesla’s long-term interests, and also addressed the funding for this to
occur. The board has met several times over the last week and is taking the
appropriate next steps to evaluate this,” the directors said.
The SEC has asked Tesla if Musk had facts to back up his claim on Twitter
that funding is ‘secured’, people familiar with the regulator’s inquiry told
the Wall
Street Journal last week.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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