Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want some market crash hedges they are perfect. Car companies are treated as government institutions. BMW and Volkswagen used to produce tanks. The German government will ask them too again if they start struggling to much. Companies like Fiat or Ferrari are as big a part of Italian national pride as rooting for their football team. Hyundai is 10% of South Korea's entire economy. The car industry is political.…
When did BMW and Volkswagen produce tanks; which ones?
Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud
521–530 of 533 posts
Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud
#522Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you muck in the private equity world at all you'd know that this isn't true at all. Lots of deals and nearly deals happen everyday and they only reach the public sphere if the parties want it too.
This was an $100 billion deal at the time. It would have been the largest LBO of all time. If there hasn't been any institution revealed to have been financing it at this point then there wasn't one.
I think it was pretty clear that he was thinking about Saudi / middle east / Norwegian / sovereign wealth type funding on equity side. Then debt for rest if needed.
These funds are looking to diversify away from oil - so for them a play in EV space makes sense.
The Saudis in particular planned to do an IPO in oil industry - but that ended up not happening which really changed their decision making. If it had they were explicit about desire to diversify (smart in my view).
It wasn't a $100B deal. Many larger investors would rolled their holdings into the private entity - Elon alone would have. $40 - $50B. If debt is in mix equity portion even smaller. It would have been the deal of the century.
"Saudi’s Public Investment Fund built the undisclosed stake of between 3 and 5 per cent of Tesla’s shares this year, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.
At Tesla’s current share price the position is worth between $1.7bn and $2.9bn. The stake, which is below the 5 per cent threshold that requires public disclosure, makes the PIF one of Tesla’s eight biggest shareholders, according to Bloomberg data.
The PIF, which has more than $250bn in assets, initially approached Tesla and chief executive Elon Musk to express interest in purchasing newly issued shares in the electric vehicle company.
However, Tesla did not act on the interest, one person informed on the matter said. Instead, the Saudi state fund acquired the position in secondary markets with the help of JPMorgan."
- Financial Times.
Someone's just chased down $2B of your stock on SECONDARY market - yeah - that's actually more interest than many deal talks even get to.
And yes - discussions like this happen with some frequency - and it's not a scandal if the deal doesn't close - you just don't usually read about them. Elon says he wanted to talk to Apple about buying tesla as well, he's on twitter more than most. That said, folks on the deal side - there tends to be movement in stock prices 3 days before deals are announced - so someone is making money on the normally secret considerations.
Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud
#523Earlier quoted context omitted.
My guess is fossil fuel cars will remain competitive with electric cars (cost per mile wise), since the more demand for fossil fuels drop, the cheaper it gets to operate fossil fuel cars. It really depends when the governments actually start banning fossil fuel cars. Or implements higher fossil fuel taxes, but I do not see a chance of that. And I do not see bans for new fossil fuel cars actually going into effect for…
Brand new fuel cars may be forbidden in many parts of the world.
I don't think this will ever happen in China or the US and if it happens on Europe we are more than 10 years away from that. I think the latter because there's no way European governments will ban long range cars that don't rely on a single vendor for the charging station network.
Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud
#524Earlier quoted context omitted.
This was an $100 billion deal at the time. It would have been the largest LBO of all time. If there hasn't been any institution revealed to have been financing it at this point then there wasn't one.
I think it was pretty clear that he was thinking about Saudi / middle east / Norwegian / sovereign wealth type funding on equity side. Then debt for rest if needed. These funds are looking to diversify away from oil - so for them a play in EV space makes sense. The Saudis in particular planned to do an IPO in oil industry - but that ended up not happening which really changed their decision making. If it had they wer…
> I think it was pretty clear that he was thinking about Saudi / middle east / Norwegian / sovereign wealth type funding on equity side. Then debt for rest if needed.
He was "thinking"? That's not funding secured. Why have all of these institutions specifically denied having discussed it at the time too? Either it wasn't these institutions, or funding was very far from secure at the time he claimed it was.
> It wasn't a $100B deal. Many larger investors would rolled their holdings into the private entity - Elon alone would have. $40 - $50B. If debt is in mix equity portion even smaller. It would have been the deal of the century.
If you are going to get investors for something like this, you're also going to roll over all the debt/options that you have on your books as well. It would have been close to ~100 billion, the largest LBO ever done.
> And yes - discussions like this happen with some frequency - and it's not a scandal if the deal doesn't close - you just don't usually read about them.
You don't read about them because the CEO doesn't announce they secured funding for one in the middle of trading. You know, the responsible thing to do.
Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud
#525Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rich people generally became rich by inheriting lots of money. https://ips-dc.org/the_self-made_hallucination_of_americas_r...
Providing for one's children can be a powerful motivator. How long does that generational wealth last on avg?
I don't have it at hand, but in finding that other page I came across something saying, I think, 3-5 generations. It's googlable.
Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud
#526Earlier quoted context omitted.
The CNBC article said 11pc in early trading. Just checked the price and it's 7.9pc down atm. That's still quite a drop, I'd say.
Gotcha - I think the parent said it only dropped slightly so I was reacting to that news at that time. It's definitely a significant drop as you point out. I'm a little surprised at such a large drop though, the small drop made a little more sense to me.
Well it turns out that my $NKLA short went well and I'm still up more than 20pc since I placed my short position 5 days ago. Just closed 75% of my position and set my stop loss to break even.
> I wouldn't recommend it. Many of us have known for months and months that the company is 100% fraud
Is this the time where I say that I have the last laugh? I think so.
As for the down-voters; they are really quiet today aren't they?
Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud
#527Earlier quoted context omitted.
Providing for one's children can be a powerful motivator. How long does that generational wealth last on avg?
I don't have it at hand, but in finding that other page I came across something saying, I think, 3-5 generations. It's googlable.
That seems somewhat reasonable. Work hard, do exceptionally well, and you can benefit your grandchildren but not very far beyond that.
Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud
#528Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plenty to criticize Tesla and Elon about, to be sure, but a lot of Elon's predictions have turned out to be true at least when it comes to passenger vehicles. What they've done with the EV market for consumers is nothing short of remarkable. Obviously Solar and Semi are a different matter. Tesla was run by a technical founder (Stanford PhD pedigree fwiw) that knows his shit (though a bit crazy and prone to exaggerati…
> Tesla was run by a technical founder (Stanford PhD pedigree fwiw) that knows his shit (though a bit crazy and prone to exaggeration and hyperbole) Musk was not a Stanford PhD nor a founder, if that's who you are referring to. If you can point me to any evidence of either that doesn't come from him, I'll be happy to stand corrected. > He even hired his brother--a guy who used to install carpets--to run Nikola's hydr…
>Musk was not a Stanford PhD nor a founder, if that's who you are referring to. If you can point me to any evidence of either that doesn't come from him, I'll be happy to stand corrected.
Musk was accepted and enrolled into a Material Science PhD at Stanford. He dropped out to be an entrepreneur. Really not sure why you are being pedantic here. The point is he has the technical chops as evidenced by being in a Stanford engineering PhD program. Trevor had absolutely nothing.
>Can you tell me what Kimball's qualifications are for sitting on the Tesla board?
It's spelled Kimbal, as long as we are being pedantic and all.
And board members of large public companies, and even startups, generally have ZERO operational control within the company.
This seems, quite different than Trevor's Fuck-up brother literally running hydrogen infrastructure for his company.
I really don't see why you are so obsessed with shitting on Tesla or defending Nikola here. There is a big fucking difference between Tesla and the Nikola fraud, and it was obvious from the start.
Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud
#529Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to Wikipedia, Musk was accepted to a Stanford PhD. As acceptance is the hardest, most competitive and therefore most distinguished part of any elite university, that in itself is a meaningful signal. Parent poster also never said he has a PhD, but that he has the pedigree , i.e. got through the hardest part.
> According to Wikipedia, Musk was accepted to a Stanford PhD Oh I've heard. Great story. Is it true? There's a lot of finely crafted mythology around the man.
Lol so Elon has faked his Stanford PhD and no one in the world has dared step forward to call him out? There are literally dozens of people who could prove this wrong if it's false. This is qanon level conspiracy theory.
you're clearly just a deranged person with some weird obsession about Elon.
Basically the polar opposite of the Elon Cultists.
Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud
#530Earlier quoted context omitted.
It'll get easier the longer it persists. Just be patient. Heck, Japanese very rarely need a pronoun at all, yet they can somehow infer meaning just fine.
No, it won't get any easier. When you use "they", you are in fact losing information. If I say "he" or "she", the amount of information I'm portraying is, and always will be, greater than a "neutral" pronoun can convey.
Information is lost. I concur. But it will get easier (than now).
If thou dost not agree, thy children may.
Perhaps my rudeness at using the familial second person with a stranger was lost. I hope so. I didn't mean to be rude. Rather to demonstrate that the English language is better for having not preserved that unnecessary distinction.