Today at 1pm local time (UTC-8) Tesla will be hosting and live streaming its special shareholders meeting to vote on the SolarCity acquisition. The meeting is taking place at Tesla’s facility at 901 Page Avenue, Fremont, which used to be the headquarters of Solyndra, a defunct solar panel manufacturer.
The location is interesting since both Tesla and Solyndra received loans from the Department of Energy under different programs, and after Solyndra went under and Tesla was in financial difficulties, the Obama administration was criticized by then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney for picking “losers”. CEO Elon Musk took the statement personally and even claimed to have tried to contact the Romney clan.
It is particularly interesting in the recent political context and the fear of walking back some programs. like the ones Tesla and Solyndra benefited from.
Tesla has since paid back its loan from the DOE in full. It is now in arguably the best financial shape it has ever been and the company is now holding a vote to acquire SolarCity, which would have been a Solyndra competitor if it was still around, at the company’s former headquarters.
While we know it will be live-streamed, it is not clear what will be in the program of the special meeting other than finalizing the vote on the merger, which has already been going on for the past month via proxy. Considering most votes have already been tallied, Tesla should be able to announce the results fairly quickly.
The livestream should be on this page: https://www.tesla.com/shareholdermeeting
CEO Elon Musk recently said that he would be surprised if the merger wouldn’t pass at this point after ‘early vote being overwhelmingly in favor” of the merger.
We will report back with updates on the meeting and in the meantime, I suggest taking a look at Tesla’s investor presentation of the merger in order to get a better idea of its plan after the two companies will have merged.
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