[AJ007]

There are a lot of other comments here about margin calls and short sellers, but ignoring all of that, if Tesla had some financial interest in SolarCity, and Elon wanted to buy SolarCity, it may be a conflict of interest if Elon Musk personally attempted to acquire SolarCity instead.

During the most recent Berkshire shareholders meeting Warren mentioned that he tries to never personally buy anything that Berkshire owns or would have interest in owning (and he does personally own financial assets outside of Berkshire.) It is a pretty clear gulf for him and fairly easy since Berkshire operates as a holding company.

The whole view of conflicts of interest can not be fully be evaluated without untangling the exact details and facts of both Elon's ownership interests and Tesla's.

I own a tiny amount of both companies but I don't know enough concrete details about SolarCity. Conceivably if Tesla is moving heavily in to the battery/energy storage business SolarCity could have assets that are much more valuable to that business. I don't know if there is valuable IP, or maybe even the current SolarCity customer base is worth a lot as battery pack customers. Presumably a Tesla battery pack/powerpack doesn't make a lot of sense if the customer doesn't have solar power? If there is an overlap between customers and SolarCity is in bad financial shape, then the acquisition could make sense.

There is a lot of guessing here, and its probably something that may be really obvious either way only years from now.