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Elon Musk Talked With SoftBank in 2017 About Tesla Investment

Elon Musk and Masayoshi Son held talks last year about SoftBank Group Corp. investing in Tesla Inc.

Elon Musk Talked With SoftBank in 2017 About Tesla Investment
Customers view a Tesla Inc. Model S electric vehicle on display at the company’s showroom in Newport Beach, California. (Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- Elon Musk and Masayoshi Son held talks last year about SoftBank Group Corp. investing in Tesla Inc., including potentially taking the electric carmaker private, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions.

Son and Musk met in April 2017 to discuss an investment in Tesla, the people said. The talks touched on taking Tesla private, but failed to progress due to disagreements over ownership. Musk proposed a structure that would have given him disproportionate control over the company through stock with supervoting rights, one person said. There are no active talks between the companies now, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations. Tesla spokesmen didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday. A SoftBank spokesman declined to comment.

Elon Musk Talked With SoftBank in 2017 About Tesla Investment

At the time of the talks, Tesla was trading at just over $300 a share. The shares surged 11 percent to $379.57 on Tuesday after Musk said he’s considering taking Tesla private at $420 a share, or an enterprise value of about $82 billion. He currently owns 20 percent of the company, so more than $60 billion is needed to buy the business from public shareholders. Tesla shares dipped after news of the talks and were down about 2 percent, to $372.01 at 3:32 p.m. in New York.

Japan’s SoftBank and its $100 billion Vision Fund often pay handsomely for large stakes in technology companies. In return, they like a say in the management of the businesses they back. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, a major backer of the Vision Fund, has built a roughly $2 billion stake in Tesla already. Tencent Holdings Ltd., the Chinese internet giant, also acquired a stake in Tesla last year.

Elon Musk Talked With SoftBank in 2017 About Tesla Investment

An acquisition of Palo Alto, California-based Tesla by overseas investors would likely trigger a national-security review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. The panel, which has stepped up its scrutiny and blocked some deals lately, could impose conditions, including limits on control of the company and information sharing.

“Most of the obvious funding sources for Tesla’s take-private transaction are foreign-based,” Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., wrote in a report. “We imagine the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. would likely object to any foreign investor buying a significant portion of a distinctively American manufacturer such as Tesla.”

Still, SoftBank is familiar with CFIUS. The company’s 2017 agreement to buy U.S.-based robotics firm Boston Dynamics was reviewed by the panel. In another deal, CFIUS forced SoftBank to relinquish day-to-day control of Fortress Investment Group before approving that $3.3 billion purchase, the Financial Times reported earlier this year.

For more on Tesla, check out the Decrypted podcast:

--With assistance from Dana Hull.

To contact the reporters on this story: Selina Wang in San Francisco at swang533@bloomberg.net;Giles Turner in London at gturner35@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net, Alistair Barr, Andrew Pollack

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.