San Francisco — Tesla CEO Elon Musk said late on Friday he would heed shareholder concerns and no longer pursue a $72bn deal to take his US electric car maker private, abandoning an idea that had stunned investors and drawn regulatory scrutiny. The decision leaves Tesla as a publicly listed company but raises new questions about its future. Its shares have been trading below their August 7 levels, when Musk announced on Twitter he was considering taking Tesla private for $420 per share, as investors wondered what the long-shot bid meant for Musk’s ability to steer the company to profitability. The move also leaves Musk and Tesla having to fend off a series of investor lawsuits and a US Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into the factual accuracy of Musk’s tweet that funding for the deal was "secured".
Musk said on Friday that his belief that there is more than enough funding to take the company private was reinforced during the process. He attributed his decision...
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