Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, on Monday said that during a meeting with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund on July 31 he was convinced that he could secure funding to take the electric car-maker private.
However, Musk added that he was still talking to the fund and other investors as he seeks to nail down financing.
Musk’s remarks come six days after he surprised investors by announcing on Twitter that he was considering taking Tesla private at a price of $420 per share and that funding was “secured.”
Reuters reported that since then, no investors have confirmed Musk’s claims and that his statement is under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and the subject of lawsuits brought against him by investors.
Although Musk on Monday said that he is looking for other potential investors, he did not provide any details on the exact source of financing.
“I left the July 31st meeting (with the Saudi fund) 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 said.n“This is why I referred to ‘funding secured’ in the August 7th announcement.”
Musk added that the Saudi fund in the last two years had approached him on several occasions about taking the company private and that the latest meeting came after it took a nearly 5 percent stake in Tesla.
According to Reuters, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) manages more than $230 billion in assets, but about 65 percent of that is stakes in large Saudi companies and most of the rest has been committed in overseas deals such as funding commitments to Blackstone Group’s U.S. infrastructure fund or SoftBank Group Corp’s Vision Fund.
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