Sunday Gazette-Mail, August 26, 2018 3A Citing investors, Musk opts to keep Tesla public By Tom Krisher The Associated Press DETROIT — Electric car and solar panel maker Tesla Inc. will remain on the public stock exchanges after CEO Elon Musk said Friday that investors have convinced him the company shouldn’t go private. The eccentric and sometimes erratic CEO wrote in a late-night statement that he made the decision based on feedback from shareholders, including institutional investors, who said they have internal rules limiting how much they can sink into a private company. Musk met with the electric car and solar panel company’s board on Thursday to tell them he thought the company should stay public and the board agreed, according to the statement. In an Aug. 7 post on Twitter, Musk wrote that he was considering taking Tesla pri- On Aug. 30, 1975, runners headed up Virginia Street during the annual Charleston Distance run. This year’s event is scheduled for Saturday. Each Sunday and Monday, Vintage West Virginia provides a glimpse of the past in the Mountain State. vate. He said it would avoid the short-term pressures of reporting quarterly results. The tweet said funding had been secured for the deal, but the company later said the details still had to be worked out with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. The tweet said Tesla would offer $420 per share, 23 percent above the Aug. 6 closing price. If all the shares were bought, the deal would be worth $72 billion. But Musk later said he expected only one-third of stakeholders to agree to the buyout. In Friday’s statement, Musk said he worked with investment firms Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Silver Lake to consider all the options, and he talked to investors. “Given the feedback I’ve received, it’s apparent that most of Tesla’s existing shareholders believe we are better off as a public company,” Musk wrote in the statement. China blasts Trump criticism; Seoul regrets Pompeo trip delay By Kim Tong-Hyung and Matthew Lee The Associated Press SEOUL, South Korea — China on Saturday lashed out at President Donald Trump for accusing Beijing of not being supportive in efforts to denuclearize North Korea, while South Korea called the U.S. decision to call off a trip to the North by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “unfortunate.” The reaction in Seoul and Beijing came hours after Trump directed Pompeo to delay his trip because of what he saw as a lack of progress on nuclear disarmament talks with the North. Trump also said the nuclear negotiations with North Korea have been hampered by a lack of support from China, which is the North’s only major ally and is engaged in an intensifying trade dispute with the United States. The Chinese foreign ministry blasted Trump’s comments. “The U.S. statement violates basic facts and is irresponsible,” the ministry said on its website. “We are seriously concerned about it and have made solemn representations to the U.S. side.” Beijing supports “advancing the process of a political settlement” following the TrumpKim meeting in Singapore, the statement said. It appealed to both sides to “show more sincerity and flexibility” instead of “being capricious and overly prejudiced.” Meanwhile, while describing the postponement of Pompeo’s trip as a setback, South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said it expects China to continue serving a “constructive role” in international efforts to solve the nuclear crisis and noted that Beijing continues to express commitment to fully implement sanctions against the North. “It’s most important to maintain a long-term view while maintaining a momentum for dialogue and concentrate diplomatic efforts to faithfully implement the agreements from the summits between South Korea and North Korea and between North Korea and the United States, instead of attaching meaning to each change in the situation,” the ministry said in a statement. “While we consider the delay of the visit to North Korea as unfortunate, we believe it’s most important for the North Korea-U.S. dialogue including Secretary Pompeo’s visits to North Korea to contribute to substantial progress in complete denuclearization and the establishment of a permanent peace regime in the Korean Peninsula,” the statement said. South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-hwa spoke with Pompeo over the phone and agreed that the allies should work to keep the atmosphere of dialogue alive, it said. Trump’s surprise announcement appeared to mark a concession by the president to widespread concerns that his prior claims of world-altering progress on the Korean Peninsula had been strikingly premature. Ending a period of animos- ity over North Korea’s nuclear and missile development, Trump made history by meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore in June. But the meeting only produced a vague statement on a nuclear-free peninsula without describing how and when it would occur. Post-summit nuclear talks got off to a rocky start, with North Korea accusing the United States of making unilateral demands on denuclearization. The North has been demanding that the United States ease or lift the sanctions that are crippling its economy. It also wants the United States to fasttrack discussions to formally declare an end to the 1950-53 Korean War, which stopped on an armistice and not a peace treaty, leaving the peninsula technically at war. Pompeo and other administration officials have suggested some concessions short of easing or lifting sanctions are possible before verified denuclearization, but have refused to be specific about what they could be. And they have been skeptical about an end-of-war declaration in the absence of any progress on the nuclear matter. Trump’s decision to call off Pompeo’s trip is clearly a frustrating development for South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who continues to push for inter-Korean engagement. Moon, who lobbied hard for the meeting between Trump and Kim, plans to visit Pyongyang in September for his third summit with Kim this year.