Elon Musk’s announcement about the Tesla remains to stay private made shares to rise sharply on 7 August, but his recent announcement surprised everyone. Now, Tesla CEO wants to make the corporation public one, FT reported. Six of Tesla’s board members confirmed in a statement that Mr Musk had informed them of his decision and they added that the CEO had their full support.
The decision, which Tesla announced on Friday night and Mr Musk explained further on Saturday, came nearly three weeks after the eccentric co-founder stunned the world with a nine-word tweet claiming that he was considering taking the company private. The billionaire said he reached his decision after discussions with shareholders and advisers from Silver Lake, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley about how his ambition might be achieved.
“I believe the better path is for Tesla to remain public,”
Elon Musk wrote in a blog post on Tesla’s website on Friday. CEO said the board had been informed the day before and had indicated its agreement. Elon added that the shareholders believe the company is better off as a public company.
“Although the majority of shareholders I spoke to said they would remain with Tesla if we went private, the sentiment, in a nutshell, was ‘please don’t do this’.”
Musk noted that he knew the process of going private would be a real challenge and it would be even more distracting than initially anticipated. Responding on Twitter on Saturday to a small shareholder in Europe, who said they would have been forced to cash out, Mr Musk said that this was a factor in his thinking.
Earlier this month he had floated the creation of a special purpose vehicle through which investors could hold shares in a private Tesla.
“Couldn’t make it happen, even through expert fiduciary SPV, without creating exotic trust structure that would prob not be accepted by regulators,”
Musk wrote and added that the current rules have good intentions, but make wealth creation harder for small investors.
