Elon Musk’s bewildering bid to take Tesla Inc private has taken another turn that has spurred trading tumult, with Morgan Stanley becoming the second firm to suspend coverage of the electric-car maker’s stock.
Whereas Goldman Sachs Group Inc paired its announcement last week that it was removing its Tesla rating and price target with the disclosure of a reason why — that it would be advising Musk — Morgan Stanley has not elaborated on what prompted its move.
Morgan Stanley’s decision to restrict coverage spurred speculation that it could be playing a role in taking the privatization bid forward and helped spur the biggest intraday gain for Tesla shares since Aug. 7.
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That was the day Musk set the effort in motion with his controversial initial tweet on the matter.
Musk said in his surprise tweet two weeks ago that he was planning to buy out some Tesla investors at US$420 a share and had secured funding to do so.
The board later said that it had not received any formal offer from Musk, and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund — the investor that Musk has described as a lynchpin of his plan to take Tesla private — is reportedly considering buying a stake in another US electric-car company.
Despite the stock rally, the confusion swirling around Musk’s efforts have started eroding the faith even of long-time bulls.
Earlier on Tuesday, Consumer Edge analyst James Albertine cut his rating on Tesla to equal-weight, from overweight, citing uncertain outcomes from regulatory inquiries and potential penalties, as well as Musk’s ability to keep serving in such a broad capacity.
This is his first downgrade of the stock since beginning coverage in July 2016.
“It is becoming more clear that he may be stretched too thin and could benefit from a CEO and/or COO [chief operating office] hire,” Albertine wrote.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
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Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained