Elon Musk’s former chief of staff testified Wednesday that the billionaire believed he had a “handshake deal” to take Tesla private in 2018, just before tweeting he had the funding for an aborted acquisition that still leaves him in a high-profile process pursued.
Sam Teller, who worked closely with Musk from 2014 to 2019, described a series of meetings his former boss held with officials from the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. His remarks came during a testimony that also shed light on the quirks of a billionaire who runs TeslaManufacturers of missile ships SpaceX And Twitter.
Among other things, Teller said he sometimes needs to “soften down” Musk’s blunt emails. Teller attributed Musk’s gruff manner to Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of autism Musk admitted to during a May 2021 television appearance with “Saturday Night Live.”
Teller’s testimony came on the ninth day of a trial sparked by a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of Tesla shareholders alleging that Musk misled them with tweets in August 2018 about the electric-car maker ending its then eight-year history as a publicly traded company company ended. The case is scheduled to be handed over to the nine-member jury on Friday.
Musk, 51, spent much of his approximately eight hours on the witness stand early in the trial, claiming he had valid reason for disclosing that he obtained “funding” for a Tesla buyout in an Aug. 7, 2018 tweet for US$420 (approx. Rs. 34,400) deal – a price that valued the electric car maker at US$72 billion (approx. Rs. 5,89,300 crore) at the time.
Teller was called to the witness stand by Musk’s attorneys on Wednesday to support and clarify the billionaire’s testimony.
At the most recent of five meetings with the Saudi fund, beginning in January 2017, Teller said Musk had become increasingly excited as he discussed privatization at a July 31, 2018 meeting with Yasir al-Rumayyan, a governor of the Saudi fund talked about Tesla.
Although specific funding amounts were discussed, Teller recalled Musk telling al-Rumayyan that it would be expensive to privatize Tesla.
“Yasir was like, ‘Don’t worry, we have a lot of money,'” Teller said.
Watching the two men happily end their meeting, Teller said, “I felt like they struck a handshake deal to proceed with the privatization of Tesla.
A week later, Musk tweeted that he had the money for the acquisition shortly after being informed that the Financial Times was about to run a story revealing that the Saudi fund had a 5 percent stake had built up in Tesla – an interest he knew about but had not been publicly disclosed.
Amid the widespread confusion over whether Musk’s Twitter account was hacked or if he was just joking, Musk tailed off a few hours later with another tweet indicating a deal was imminent.
The prospect of selling Tesla shares pushed shares higher during a 10-day period covered by the shareholder lawsuit that led to the current lawsuit. The stock price fell after Musk scrapped the going-private proposal, resulting in billions of dollars in losses, based on estimates by an economist hired by shareholders’ lawyers to testify in the lawsuit.
After the Securities and Exchange Commission claimed Musk’s tweets were misleading, he and Tesla reached a $40 million (roughly Rs. 300 billion rupees) settlement in September 2018 without admitting wrongdoing. US District Judge Edward Chen, who is presiding over the ongoing trial, has also ruled Musk’s tweets untrue, leaving a jury to decide if he posted them carelessly.
During his testimony, Teller revealed that Musk doesn’t like it when someone filters information for him. “He’s the type of CEO who likes to record his communications,” Teller said.
Still, Teller likened his job to being an air traffic controller who faced “a lot of problem-solving” around the clock. “Most of my waking hours were work,” Teller said, a grueling schedule that led him to retire from Musk in 2019. “I was pretty tired and it was time to do something else,” Teller said.
