we discuss with david welch and bloomberg businessweek's max >> the issue is with the trump administration, it is not totally clear how the government body that regulates this sort of thing, foreign investment in u.s. companies, would treat something like this. earlier this year, the trump

for more, let's get to david welch. d, in the meantime, there is the sort of anti-short quest on the part of elon musk that does not seem to be succeeding. david: no, it doesn't. the shares initially gained quite a bit, but they have given all that back. it really is not driving them to the brink. it did not succeed in the first place either because the shares got as high as 300 $79, which is well short of the $420 buyout offer. the market did not see this whole thing is very credible. as it's come back down, the shorts are in the same position they were before, which is kind of not too bad in waiting for the next shoe to drop that will affect the shares. julie: there's also this whole theory that in part elon musk was doing this to get the shares to a certain level to convertible bond holders to take equity rather than debt of the company. talk us through that theory that does not seem terribly credible. david: no, it doesn't because really what his main driver is is he does dislike scrutiny of the public markets, even

joining us is david welch.seems to be the very candid interview with the new york times. almost explosive interview with the new york times. lots of stuff coming out. to tryted he was going to take the company private on the way to the airport, which tells us not a lot of thought put into it perhaps and that the financing was not -- this was not really a plan that is set in stone and ready to go. we sort of knew that, but now it is really clear this was not an organized communication effort involving the board. there was no real plan for it. he also talks about getting a coo in an almost sort of cavalierly said if somebody is qualified and wants the job, they can have it. at certain points, he sounds unstable, tearing up in the interview and talking about what they told the model 3 production the up has -- what a toll model 3 production ramp up has taken on him. the shares are taking a hit to a tune of 8% today on this interview. shery: what is the latest about the reports on the sec probe? david: there is a su

is detroit bureau chief david welch. sound serious. you found consistent gaps with and misaligned spot welds. kind of alarming. give us more detail on what you found. >> to be honest, we have a department called the ubs evidence lab who went out and hired a team of engineers, i'm not a professional engineer, i am a finance guy, and they spent four months looking for the car. those were a handful of issues with the vehicle. it is very concerning. when we talk about the fitness audit, the procedure they do for all of the vehicles that they tear down which is their expertise and this was larger gaps than you would expect, particularly for a luxury vehicle, we will see if the company fixes those. the conversations we had with other manufacturing people, it can be challenging to get the gaps narrowed without doing more aesthetic fixes to get the underlying cause of the problem fixes. to get the underlying cause of the problem could take a longer terdown time and the issues were alarming. emily: how does this affect a luxury car already on t

. -- david welch. guess they can't make it simple for us and come out with all the information at once. i want to take the formation of the special committee first. what is this committee going to do. it is interesting because the company had said they have not actually received a formal offer from musk. tell us the role of the committee. >> it is sort of routine here. whenever there is a buyout offer for a company of any time, -- the it is a company board has to make sure they are representing the shareholders and not just management. in this case they do because the impetus for this is elon musk hates short-sellers and he hates the in and out retail investor almost as much. he said that in the first quarter earnings call when he advised certain types of investors not to buy his dock. -- by his stock. they have a law firm and three people on the special committee, two of whom are outside directors. the third one is a former silver city cfo member, another musk company. he is elon's guy. the other desk

lisa: david welch, our detroit bureau chief, thank you. you know that we are monitoring president trump speaking in the white house in the roosevelt room. these are current images from that meeting. he is having, or he is announcing a grant for a drug-free community support program, this after he talked about the opioid epidemic and how to counter it. we will bring you anything he says that is important. you can continue to monitor it on live go. if you want to get a sense of what we are watching, check out gtv . you can check out the different charts, a friday of different things you can go to. this was suggests the s&p 500 is overbought. you can look at that and how oil futures are setting up for a bounce. from new york, this is bloomberg. ♪ caroline: this is "bloomberg markets." caroline: i'm caroline hyde. lisa: i'm lisa lisa abramowicz. lisa: we want to get to live images of president trump, expected to announce a grant for drug free communities support programs. he has been talking about the opioid crisis, among teenage alcohol u

we discuss with bloomberg's detroit bureau chief david welch and bloomberg businessweek's max chafkin. max: the issue is that with the trump administration, it is not totally clear how cfius, which is the government body that regulates this sort of thing, foreign investments in u.s. companies, would treat something like this. earlier this year, the trump administration basically stopped the broadcom-qualcomm deal on national security grounds. the idea being that if qualcomm were taken over, it would somehow hurt the u.s., hurt our interests. and you can imagine a similar argument made with electric vehicles and especially batteries, because tesla obviously has a big chunk of the total electric vehicle production, at least definitely in the u.s., and plans to have a huge amount of battery production. so you can imagine that being an issue and it will just be one of many headaches that tesla and elon musk will have to deal with in the coming weeks, months, maybe even years. emily: meantime, this report on the sec sending a subpoena. david, walk us through the continued hurdles that rema

david welch for bloomberg. i know you will continue reporting on this. going public in march, dropbox has had some ups and downs. the stock price spiked on his ipo. and after the first earnings report, only to dramatically fall after the departure of the coo despite another quarter of strong earnings. i caught up with the ceo and talked about what has changed since going public. >> in some ways it is back to work, back to business as usual. and part of our path to being public, we have been running the company like a public company for the past couple years. so, if anything, it has been back to recruiting and building. emily: you just reported strong earnings are you also announced your coo is leaving. and investor seem spooked by that. should they be concerned? amazing,ennis has been and incredible partner. when i think back to where we were when he joined the company we were a fraction of the size, a few hundred million in revenue and now we are global company with 2000 people, offices around the world. and it's actually because the business is in such

caroline: david welch, the detroit bureau chief. be waiting on tender hooks to see how that goes. thank you. now, rio tinto shares are falling today and sales from the world's second-largest miner fell short of estimates. >> the outlook is pretty positive. as far as we see it with china, remember we have entry points in china. we have seen copper and so forth, and it is slowing down as expected and forecast. at the same time, you saw a few weeks ago that the chinese government decided to put similar -- so today when i look at the other -- what other groups have in china, copper and so forth, i do not have concerns. so the chinese situation as far as we see it is pretty good. my personal experience, i go there about three or four times a year, and last time i met with clear in hisretty discussion that the restructuring of the steel industry, the restructuring of aluminum is here to stay, which means china will continue to buy high-quality products. >> at the moment, to talk about china further, do you see them hitting an inflection p

for more, david welch from detroit. how much should we read into this? many were calling for the chief executive to take a leave of absence and instead it is the hr function. elon may not be related to and the times. we are looking at more turnover. they lost their head of autopilot, which was fairly a time a mess. they lost their head of engineering. he was gone after that. you have seen this with tesla for a while. in addition to the fact it is just not good to keep losing top executives, the short-sellers probably the most high profile short-sellers in tesla. so, it is never a good sign. we are seeing more of it. joe: what does this mean, leave of absence? others have taken a leave of absence. they are never seen back at the company. what does that mean in terms of a departure? >> some executives have gone back. back, tesla always says they need to recharge. in the face of doug field. this person is going to leave the company for good. we have high turnover at tesla. it is basically a 10-year-old company, still like being assertive. caroline: we will

david welch. what is this story at this point between elon musk and his company?tting some mixed signals here. elon musk does not really want to step aside. he probably thinks he is the only one who can lead the company through model for production and getting that up to speed. hopefully getting the company profitable as he predicted would happen. takeleading it through to it private. he is trying to get that underway. to a certain degree, he is right. he is the genius who runs the company in the eyes of the investors. if he is going to do any sort of roadshow and effort to take the company private, he has to be the one who is there. could you use a coo or a manufacturing head who could take the production to the next level, that would probably be a good idea. indicating he thinks he is the only one who can do it. interview, it sounded like he would welcome the help. at the same time, it sounded like he did not think anybody else could do it. he was leaving open the idea of if you think you can find somebody who can, i will hire them tomorrow. he does not think an

. $420,ares failed to reach indicating market skepticism. ,oining us now is david welch bloomberg detroitke let's forget about the fact it would be the biggest leveraged buyout in history and they need a strong anchor investor. does it make sense for the company? can it grow and perform better? >> very possibly it could. one of the things that musk said is they are making short-term decisions for the good of the happyr to keep investors and at a. this is a company that needs to invest for the long haul. this is an unusual company in the sense it is an automotive startup. we have not seen one of those, a credible one, since the late 1940's. these companies need a lot of money, a lot of time. startups where you get the product out the door in 6-12 months and start bringing in a lot of cash. it takes a long time to get a car out there, then you have to make a second one and third one. it is years and billions in the markets don't have patience for that. elon musk does not have patience for short-sellers. it does make a lot of sense for them. finances are a big question though. francine: i wa

. >> jack welch. david: jack welch was one at ge. left obviously the company didn't do so well. i wonder if the same could happen to cbs? >> the added complication which i'm sure will be brought up, he will have to answer this question, the battle he is having with shari redstone, national amusement entertainment. david: is this just a coincidence that this things comes up? >> let me explain one thing that viewer gets handle around it. national amusement is holding company. controlling shareholder of cbs and viacom. she wants to merge the two together. les moonves does not. they're in a pitched court battle. he wants to essentially break off, sell to somebody es. the question you ask is very relevant. did she plant the story? david: and? >> my sources doesn't say know. that doesn't mean ronan farrow didn't go to her for help. give you idea, i don't cover -- david: ronan farrow is the journalist came out with the story. >> let me explain something to you, this is out there that she might plant this investigative reporter a long time,

welch with was david the latest on the tesla soccer.talian government has called on managers at atlantia , atway operator to resign least the deputy prime minister said the failure of the highway bridge in general shows the importance of increasing investments and hinting that you spending limits could put lives at risk. the pushed back and said in his statement, we will not endanger any -- not engage in any political finger-pointing. responsew strong a from the e.u. is this? kevin: actually it is quite strong, especially that phrase about no finger-pointing. the e.u. the e.u. executive branch went on to point out that in fact, italy receives billions of euros for infrastructure and importantly, the e.u. pointed out that countries themselves set their own spending priorities. that was one of the points they were making and talking about the amount of money and encouragement they get to spend on construction in italy. the finance minister in italy has been weighing in on the spending issue. what are the details there? >> he issued a stro

like to thank fay rosenfeld breland grove and, kerry welch, chan ho dish, serena rocco, arden ambra said, alison paul, melissa novak, emily poland, davidmackey, max clarke, richard schnur as well as the wonderful curators who have shown our special guest things of great beauty and relevance before they inspire them further. i would also like to thank the guards at the library as one is our wonderful team from park blvd. tonight i would also like to thank all of the wonderful people, personnel and paul bogart. tonight we celebrate the just published memoir of sey hersh is simply called "reporter." sey will sign books after a conversation. it is not in my habit to really read blurbs, but this one is quite extraordinary. it is a blurb to speak on the book. this blurb is by john recarey and says this book is the central reading for every journalist an aspiring journalist world over. quite an endorsement. now, i also would like to give you a sense of just how extraordinary this book is and how beautifully it is written, by reading to you the first paragraph in the first sentence of the second paragraph, which would you -- which you will see