Elon Musk testified on Monday that he was sure he had backing from Saudi financiers in 2018 to take Tesla private, as he defended himself against claims that he defrauded investors by tweeting about his electric car company.
At a trial in San Francisco Federal Court, Mr Musk told the investors' lawyer Nicholas Porritt that on July 31, 2018, he met representatives of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund at Tesla's factory in Fremont, California.
He said he did not discuss a takeover price, but the Saudi representatives made it clear they would do whatever it took to make a buyout happen.
“PIF unequivocally wanted to take Tesla private,” Mr Musk said.
The trial tests his habit of taking to Twitter to air his sometimes irreverent views, and when the world's second-richest person can be held liable for crossing a line.
At stake are millions of dollars for shareholders who claim they suffered losses after Mr Musk tweeted on August 7, 2018, that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private at $420 a share, and that “investor support is confirmed”.
Tesla's stock price surged after Mr Musk's tweets, and later fell as it became clear that the buyout would not happen.
A jury of nine will decide whether the billionaire artificially inflated Tesla's share price by promoting the buyout's prospects, and if so by how much.
The plaintiffs have already cleared high legal hurdles in the rare securities class action, with US Judge Edward Chen ruling last May that Mr Musk's post was untruthful and reckless.
But in Monday's testimony, he said he believed he could have sold enough shares of his rocket company SpaceX to fund a buyout, and “felt funding was secured” with SpaceX stock alone.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission also sued Mr Musk over the tweets, leading to a combined $40 million in settlements for him and Tesla, and a requirement that a Tesla lawyer screen some of his tweets in advance.
The SEC had alleged that Mr Musk rounded the buyout offer to $420 a share from $419 because he had recently learnt about the higher amount's “significance in marijuana culture” and thought his girlfriend would find it funny.
Mr Musk denied having thought that.
“It was chosen because it was a 20 per cent premium over the stock price,” he testified. “The $420 price was not a joke.”
He began testifying on Friday, telling jurors that while Twitter, which he bought in October, was the most democratic way to communicate, his tweets did not always affect Tesla stock the way he expected.
“Just because I tweet something does not mean people believe it or will act accordingly,” Mr Musk said.
The defendants also include current and former Tesla directors, who Mr Spiro said had “pure” motives in their response to the plan.
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
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The five pillars of Islam
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Know your cyber adversaries
Cryptojacking: Compromises a device or network to mine cryptocurrencies without an organisation's knowledge.
Distributed denial-of-service: Floods systems, servers or networks with information, effectively blocking them.
Man-in-the-middle attack: Intercepts two-way communication to obtain information, spy on participants or alter the outcome.
Malware: Installs itself in a network when a user clicks on a compromised link or email attachment.
Phishing: Aims to secure personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.
Ransomware: Encrypts user data, denying access and demands a payment to decrypt it.
Spyware: Collects information without the user's knowledge, which is then passed on to bad actors.
Trojans: Create a backdoor into systems, which becomes a point of entry for an attack.
Viruses: Infect applications in a system and replicate themselves as they go, just like their biological counterparts.
Worms: Send copies of themselves to other users or contacts. They don't attack the system, but they overload it.
Zero-day exploit: Exploits a vulnerability in software before a fix is found.
INFO
Everton 0
Arsenal 0
Man of the Match: Djibril Sidibe (Everton)
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Red flags
- Promises of high, fixed or 'guaranteed' returns.
- Unregulated structured products or complex investments often used to bypass traditional safeguards.
- Lack of clear information, vague language, no access to audited financials.
- Overseas companies targeting investors in other jurisdictions - this can make legal recovery difficult.
- Hard-selling tactics - creating urgency, offering 'exclusive' deals.
Courtesy: Carol Glynn, founder of Conscious Finance Coaching
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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The burning issue
The internal combustion engine is facing a watershed moment – major manufacturer Volvo is to stop producing petroleum-powered vehicles by 2021 and countries in Europe, including the UK, have vowed to ban their sale before 2040. The National takes a look at the story of one of the most successful technologies of the last 100 years and how it has impacted life in the UAE.
Read part four: an affection for classic cars lives on
Read part three: the age of the electric vehicle begins
Read part one: how cars came to the UAE
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
THREE
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Dhadak 2
Director: Shazia Iqbal
Starring: Siddhant Chaturvedi, Triptii Dimri
Rating: 1/5
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DIVINE%20INTERVENTOIN
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The five pillars of Islam
1. Fasting
2. Prayer
3. Hajj
4. Shahada
5. Zakat
Richard Jewell
Director: Clint Eastwood
Stars: Paul Walter Hauser, Sam Rockwell, Brandon Stanley
Two-and-a-half out of five stars
Living in...
This article is part of a guide on where to live in the UAE. Our reporters will profile some of the country’s most desirable districts, provide an estimate of rental prices and introduce you to some of the residents who call each area home.
The biog
Family: He is the youngest of five brothers, of whom two are dentists.
Celebrities he worked on: Fabio Canavaro, Lojain Omran, RedOne, Saber Al Rabai.
Where he works: Liberty Dental Clinic
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
Heather, the Totality
Matthew Weiner,
Canongate
KILLING OF QASSEM SULEIMANI
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Zayed Sustainability Prize
