Rules governing Norway’s $1 trillion wealth fund would permit it to stay on as an investor in Tesla if the electric automaker goes private, its deputy CEO stated on Tuesday.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk shocked financial markets this month when he informed on Twitter he was thinking a $420 per share take-private deal for the money-losing automaker.
Norway is Tesla’s third-biggest market and the nation’s wealth fund, globally the biggest sovereign wealth fund, had a 0.48 percent stake in the automaker worth about $253 million as of the start of this year, according to the recent data from the fund.
Tesla shares have been hit by investor issues about Musk’s strategies, and concerns if the company has secured the funding to go private, and the SEC has started an inquiry related to Musk’s tweets, as per a person with direct knowledge of the matter.
Trond Grande, deputy CEO of the Norwegian fund, refused to stated whether Tesla had approached the fund about going private.
However, he stated that although the fund’s main practice is to sell its stake when a company leaves an exchange, or soon after, regulations regulating the fund set by the Norwegian Finance Ministry and parliament do permit it to stay on in a listed company that goes private.
“The priority is to try to preserve the value for the fund. That is the priority,” Grande informed Reuters on the sidelines of an earnings presentation. “If that means that the fund will be invested in a company that has been delisted for a period of time, that could happen.”
“But as a main rule, we will exit the investments as and when, or soon after, it has been taken off an exchange,” he stated.
