[xkjkls]

I mean, similarly to my certainty Donald Trump was lying that his taxes are under audit, and thats why he can't release them. Do I have exact knowledge of Elon's head state, no, but I can make inferences from all his actions since. If a buyer truly existed to facilitate that transaction, that would be public knowledge at this point.

[onethought]

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.

[xkjkls]

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.

[slownews45]

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.

[xkjkls]

> 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.