Largest Tesla Investor: Elon Musk Needs Help ‘Psychologically as Much as Practically’

Tesla’s largest institutional investor recently stated that the SEC questioned it about CEO Elon Musk’s “funding secured” tweets about going private, and stated that as an investment firm, it believes that Musk “needs help.”

Reuters reports that the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust, Tesla’s largest institutional investors, has stated that the SEC questioned the firm about Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s tweets in which he claimed he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private. Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust asset manager Baillie Gifford’s James Anderson said in an interview: “He needs help, and I mean that psychologically as much as practically.”

Anderson told Reuters that he had discussed the idea of bringing in another executive to assist Musk, a decision which analysts have been suggesting for some time. Anderson stated that around the time of Musk’s tweet in which he stated that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private, the CEO was “getting there” in relation to the idea of taking on another executive at the company.

Discussing the SEC’s probe into Musk’s tweets, Anderson stated: “I don’t know what they’ll do with him, but there’s no implication that we’ve done anything wrong. I think quite naturally they wanted to know whether major shareholders had any lead indication or knowledge of the tweet about ‘funding secured.’”

Anderson did state, however, that he still had faith in Musk and his ability to grow Tesla as a company: “We think there is a decent chance that they can prove to be an extremely profitable, competitively advantaged company which will produce high returns,” Anderson said.

However, Nomura Instinet analyst Romit Shah release research today which states that Tesla is “no longer investable.” One of the key reasons for this, according to Shah, is “the erratic behavior of Elon Musk.” Shah stated that with a different CEO, the company could be a good investment but that Musk’s erratic behavior make Tesla too risky.