Musk Tesla Plan ‘Doesn't Make Sense to Me,’ Janus CEO Says

(Bloomberg) -- Elon Musk’s plan to take Tesla Inc. private “doesn’t make sense” because it was poorly communicated and calls for a high valuation, the chief executive of Janus Henderson Group Plc said.

“I don’t really understand the idea of what was suggested in the potential for them to go private,” Dick Weil, CEO of the $370 billion asset manager, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television Thursday. “That’s obviously an incredibly large valuation to somehow take into the private market.”

The suggestion that current shareholders could continue to own the company is “a combination of financial engineering that I don’t really understand,” he said.

Weil added: “I, like a great many others, am confused by what is motivating” the go-private plan and “why it was communicated in the way it was. I just can’t interpret it. It doesn’t make sense to me.”

Janus Henderson funds held about 305,000 Tesla shares as of March 31, down from 712,000 at the end of 2017, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

--With assistance from Sarah Gardner.

To contact the reporters on this story: John Gittelsohn in Los Angeles at johngitt@bloomberg.net;Vonnie Quinn in New York at vquinn@bloomberg.net;Caroline Hyde in London at chyde3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Margaret Collins at mcollins45@bloomberg.net, Alan Mirabella, Mary Romano

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