Elon Musk to Testify About Tesla’s 2016 SolarCity Acquisition

• Tesla CEO Elon Musk might be called to testify as soon as today about the company’s 2016 acquisition of SolarCity Corp., a home solar company he was CEO of at the time, The Wall Street Journal reported. Plaintiffs including several pension funds that owned Tesla shares say the deal was designed to benefit Musk and bail out a failing company. But his attorneys say SolarCity was worth more than Tesla paid for it and that the acquisition fulfilled his long-held goal of creating a vertically integrated sustainable energy company. A Delaware court will decide if Musk improperly controlled the transaction, which was approved by the company’s shareholders. Musk owned about 22% of Tesla at the time, and his brother, Kimbal Musk, was on its board, but Elon Musk’s lawyers say board members acted independently. The board members have denied wrongdoing. “SolarCity I think would have done just fine by itself and Tesla would have done fine by itself, but in the long-term, they are better together. And that is what the future will show,” Elon Musk said in a 2019 deposition. If he loses, he could be required to repay Tesla for the value of the SolarCity transaction.

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