Today, there’s both good and bad news for Tesla. First, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk being courted by the French prime minister to invest in the country. Second, for the bad news, a billionaire investor just dumped their entire Tesla stake for the first quarter of 2023. Here are the stories.
‘Choose France’
The most recent guest of French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron in his official residence at Élysée Palace is no other than Tesla’s CEO and billionaire, Musk.
There, Macron courted the Tesla CEO to invest in France, pointing out that “we have so much to do together” and saying he also aims for investments from the other companies Musk manages, not just Tesla.
The meeting happened ahead of the “Choose France” 2023 summit, aimed at attracting businesses and investors to invest in the Western European country. According to French media, France receives €13 billion or around $14 billion from various investors. Two hundred business leaders are gathering with the French prime minister on Monday.
After Macron met with Musk, the former took to Twitter to share his insights. He wrote, posting a photo of the two together, “With @ElonMusk, we talked about the attractiveness of France and the significant progress in the electric vehicle and energy sectors. We also talked about digital regulation. We have so much to do together. See you this afternoon at the #ChooseFrance Summit!”
Macron sees this event as an opportunity to regain the public’s trust as his popularity slumped after the French government raised the French retirement age. The Choose France 2023 summit will allow the prime minister to defend his pro-business reforms and seek attention to his advocacy for the environment, such as through his support for electric vehicles like Tesla’s.
Since the Prime Minister hosted the meeting in 2018, the number of investment opportunities from business leaders who have attended the event has reached record-high numbers.
The news also came amidst Musk’s announcement that he is appointing a new Twitter CEO and will step down from the post. Twitter’s new CEO is now Linda Yaccarino.
As soon as he announced this, Tesla shares incredibly went up as people now believe the billionaire will have more time to focus on Tesla.
Dumping of Tesla stake
Now, we get to the bad news about Tesla. The family office of Hungarian-American businessman and philanthropist George Soros has dumped their entire Tesla stock for the first quarter of this year, a 13F filing published late last week indicated.
It was during 2022’s second quarter when Soros Fund Management added Tesla stock to its holdings, which reached around 132,000 shares by the end of that year. Should they hadn’t dumped the stock, the fund would have likely enjoyed major gains from the surge in Tesla’s stock price this year.
Tesla shares significantly increased by 68 percent during the first quarter, and since then, the stock has pared its advance, now up to around 37 percent.
