Despite the strong negative media reaction to Tesla’s proposed acquisition of SolarCity and subsequent 10% stock price decrease, Elon Musk now says that he is convinced the merger will pass after talking to the companies’ major investors.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal (Paywall), the CEO confirmed that he has been meeting with Tesla’s biggest shareholders and mutual funds:
“The most informed investors are highly supportive of the transaction,” Mr. Musk said. As of last week, he said he had “yet to talk to an investor after I have fully explained the situation and not had them support it.”
He added, “Most just didn’t understand how bringing together a car and a solar company made sense from a product standpoint.”
Mr. Musk said he expects “the end result will be a supermajority, a two-thirds majority” in favor, even though such a supermajority isn’t required for approval.
This is in line with the support we highlighted in our story ‘Tesla’s SolarCity deal gets support from shareholders and hate from people who don’t own the stock‘ last month and in our admittedly unscientific survey of investors:
That’s despite Musk recusing himself to vote his ~22% stake in both companies.
Furthermore, as we speculated yesterday, Musk confirmed that details of the tie-up with SolarCity will be included in his ‘Tesla Master Product Plan’ set to be released this week.
The date for the vote to approve the proposed acquisition has yet to be announced.
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