United News of Bangladesh

Nissan and Renault have changed their mutual cross-shareholdings equal at 15%, ironing out a source of conflict in the Japan-French auto alliance. Renault Group will transfer 28.4% of the Nissan shares it owns into a French trust, so its stake will be the same 15% that Nissan Motor Co. has in the French automaker. Read more: Nissan plans to halt production in Russia Voting rights would be “neutralized” for most decisions, the two companies said in a statement Monday. The move had been anticipated because of leaks to various media outlets. Read more: Nissan has launched all-new Nissan Magnite in Bangladesh The Nissan-Renault alliance began in 1999, at a time when the Japanese automaker was in tough financial straits. The disparity was a cause of friction, especially after Nissan became far more profitable than Renault.

In May last year Fortum India, a subsidiary of a Finnish solar developer, won the bid for a solar power project in the state of Gujarat. The project was due to be completed three months ago and would have generated enough electricity for 200,000 homes. But like many other solar power projects in the country, it's been delayed as Fortum India struggles to source and pay for necessary components. “For the last six months, we have not been able to finish developing any new projects,” said Manoj Gupta, who oversees Fortum India's solar projects in India. Gupta said solar panels and cells have become obstructively expensive because of protective taxes the Indian federal government implemented in April last year. The basic customs duty imposes a levy of 40% on imported solar modules and 25% on solar cells. The government says it wants to encourage the domestic manufacture of components required to produce solar power and reduce the country's reliance on imports. Read more: Bangladesh, India don’t compete with each other in garment sector, says BGMEA President But solar developers say homegrown producers, while rapidly growing and being pushed along by policy initiatives, are still too fledgling to meet demand. Current cell and module manufacturing capacity in India is around 44 gigawatts per year, just a fraction of what's needed to meet India's renewable aims. In 2022, India had a target to install 100 gigawatts of solar energy as part of goal to add 175 gigawatts of clean electricity to its grid. But only 63 gigawatts of solar power were ultimately installed last year, according to Indian federal government data. India missed its 2022 renewable energy target by just nine gigawatts. “Without these duties we would have easily achieved our targets for larger solar projects, at least,” said Jyoti Gulia of the renewable energy research and advisory firm JMK Research. Most solar developers in India and around the world rely on China, with the nation producing more than 80% of the world's solar components, according to the International Energy Agency. Many countries have tried to encourage domestic production to limit dependence on the country. The United States' recent climate law, for example, also incentivizes homemade renewable energy manufacturing. “China controls the market and we saw during both the pandemic and the geopolitical conflict between our countries that they just stopped the supply chain completely,” said Chiranjeev Saluja from the Indian solar manufacturer Premier Energies. “I think the government wants to develop the whole solar ecosystem, that is the intent behind such policies.” Saluja added that a bustling solar manufacturing industry also had wider economic benefits. “The jobs in manufacturing are well-paying, secure jobs. And while developers employ only a handful of people, to manufacture cells required to produce one gigawatt of solar energy, you will need at least 500 people,” he said. A 2022 report found that India’s renewable energy sector could employ more than one million people by 2030, but only if domestic manufacturing continued to scale up considerably. Another Indian government policy that mandates that solar components can only be bought from government-approved manufacturers to ensure that the modules and cells are of good quality is also stalling projects, according to analysts. Read more: Indian investors can set up industries in Bangladesh through buy-back arrangement: PM Developers are unable to purchase from southeast Asian countries as manufacturers there have yet to be approved or have not applied. Many of those countries have free trade agreements with India which would make them exempt from import taxes. “The situation is quite grim today,” said Vinay Rustagi, managing director at the renewable energy consultancy Bridge to India. “Global supply chain issues, material shortages and, of course, the duty on solar components has led to a lot of projects being postponed.” Rustagi said the growth in domestic manufacturing as a result of the tax is “encouraging, but I do not think it is sustainable.” He added that the government “should be aiming to create strong domestic capabilities that can be a preferred choice without any taxes or duties.” Solar manufacturers do not agree. “We have allowed for dumping from other countries for too long. Otherwise domestic manufacturing would have taken a strong root already,” said Gyanesh Chaudhary, vice chairman at Vikram Solar, an Indian solar manufacturer. “These taxes and policies were announced well in advance and there was enough time to factor them into costs,” Chaudhary said. “Mandates such as the approved list of manufacturers are to make sure the quality of products coming into India are of a certain minimum quality.” But Srivatsan Iyer of solar developer Hero Future Energies said the unpredictability of the sector made it hard to factor in the extra costs. “Land, connectivity to the project site, supply chain issues are just some dynamic factors and, of course, the pandemic,” said Iyer of the difficult landscape for solar projects. “With these duties, clean power is just more expensive for India now.” Iyer is worried that the extra costs could also thwart India's next renewable energy target in 2030. But he's hopeful the government might defer some duties in the upcoming federal budget announcement scheduled for Feb. 1. The government hasn't yet given any indication that it will make amendments to its tax policy.

Bangladeshi officials have received indications from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that the multilateral lender's board has agreed in principle to approve the country's loan request. Several officials of the Ministry of Finance said that the IMF will approve the loan for Bangladesh on Monday (Jan 30). An IMF team led by Rahul Anand visited Dhaka from October 26 to November 9, 2022, to thrash out the details of the program.  Read: IMF to support Bangladesh’s aspirations of becoming a higher-income country by 2041: DMD After that the IMF's deputy managing director, Antoinette Monsio Sayeh, visited Bangladesh from January 14-18 and praised the economic development and social progress she witnessed during her visit, saying it has left an impression on the whole world. Sayeh also congratulated Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on that. Former IMF economist Dr Ahsan H. Mansur told UNB that is known of the visits and discussions held with the Ministry of Finance, Bangladesh Bank, National Board of Revenue, Ministry of Planning, Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), and others indicates the global lender has reached an agreement to provide $4.5 billion loan to the country. The first instalment of the IMF loan is just awaiting formalities, he said. "We are getting the loan just the way we wanted. A total of $4.5 billion will be leant to Bangladesh," Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal told the media earlier. The amount will be disbursed in seven installments till December 2026. The first installment of $447.78 million will be cleared in February. The remaining amount will be in six equal instalments of $659.18 million each. Read: Bangladesh Bank expects first instalment of $4.5 b IMF loan to arrive by next month: Spokesman The interest rate of the loan will depend on the market rate at the time of maturity. The Finance Ministry has calculated that the rate would be around 2.2 percent, sources said. The IMF earlier stated that its delegation led by Rahul Anand  and the Bangladesh authorities had agreed on a program to support Bangladesh's economic policies with a 42-month arrangement of about $3.2 billion under the Extended Credit Facility (ECF) and the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) as well as of about $1.3 billion under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF).  

Export-import activities between Bangladesh and India through the Hili land port in Dinajpur resumed today after a two-day holiday on the occasion of India’s Republic Day. Abdur Rahman Liton, president of Hili Customs C&F Agents Association, said that trade via the land port was suspended on January 26 and 27 due to India's 74th Republic Day and weekly government holiday. “Export and import of goods via the port has restarted. Vehicles coming from India with goods have started entering the land port since noon,” said Abdur Rahman. However, the movement of travelers through the land port has been as usual, said Md Badiuzzaman, in-charge of the Hili immigration check post.  

The production of opium in Myanmar has flourished since the military's seizure of power, with the cultivation of poppies up by a third in the past year as eradication efforts have dropped off and the faltering economy has led more people toward the drug trade, according to a United Nations report released Thursday. In 2022, in the first full growing season since the military wrested control of the country from the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, Myanmar saw a 33% increase in cultivation area to 40,100 hectares (99,090 acres), according to the report by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. “Economic, security and governance disruptions that followed the military takeover of February 2021 have converged, and farmers in remote, often conflict-prone areas in northern Shan and border states have had little option but to move back to opium,” said the U.N. office's regional representative Jeremy Douglas. Read more: Myanmar violence has displaced more than 1 million, says UN The overall value of the Myanmar opiate economy, based on U.N. estimates, ranges between $660 million and $2 billion, depending on how much was sold locally, and how much of the raw opium was processed into heroin or other drugs. "Virtually all the heroin reported in East and Southeast Asia and Australia originates in Myanmar, and the country remains the second-largest opium and heroin producer in the world after Afghanistan," Douglas said. "There is no comparing the two at this point as Afghanistan still produces far more, but the expansion underway in Myanmar should not be dismissed and needs attention as it will likely continue — it is directly tied to the security and economic situation we see unfolding today.” The so-called Golden Triangle area, where the borders of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet, has historically been a major production area for opium and hosted many of the labs that converted it to heroin. Decades of political instability have made the frontier regions of Myanmar, also known as Burma, largely lawless, to be exploited by drug producers and traffickers. Most of the opium exported by Myanmar goes to China and Vietnam, while heroin goes to many countries across the region, Douglas said. “It is really where the value is for traffickers,” he said. “Very high profits.” The cultivation of opium had been trending downward in recent years before the military took control of the government in 2021. Production estimates hit a bottom of 400 metric tons (440 tons) in 2020. After rising slightly in 2021, that spiked in 2022 to an estimated 790 metric tons (870 tons), according to the report. Since it took control of the government, the military's use of deadly force to hold on to power has escalated conflict with its civilian opponents to the point that some experts describe the country as now being in a state of civil war. The costs have been high, with 2,810 people killed by government forces to date and 17,427 detained, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. The violence has meant that the government has been unable to reach some areas to carry out drug eradication raids, and has also had to divert its resources elsewhere. Consequently, eradication efforts appear to have decreased substantially, with 1,403 hectares (3,467 acres) reported eradicated in 2022 — some 70% fewer than in 2021. Read more: Myanmar military killed at least 142 children in past 16 months: UN expert At the same time, as the conflict continues to take its toll on Myanmar's economy, an increasing number of rural households have been pushed into relying more on opium cultivation for income, the U.N. said. “The expansion of opium production that is underway is fundamentally about poverty and people in rural areas reacting to the economic situation,” Douglas said. “It has always been there in tough times. At the same time, the security situation is clearly difficult with increasing frequency and intensity of conflict, and those involved in the drug economy have been left largely unchecked.” Its synthetic drug economy has also been surging for the same reasons, with reported regional seizures of methamphetamine and other drugs reaching record levels. In a single bust in September in Laos, for example, authorities seized 33 million methamphetamine tablets along with 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) of crystal methamphetamine.

Tesla on Wednesday posted record net income in the fourth quarter of last year, and the company predicted that additional software-related profits will keep its margins higher than any other automaker. The Austin, Texas, maker of electric vehicles and solar panels said it earned $3.69 billion from October through December, or an adjusted $1.19 per share. That beat estimates of $1.13 that had been reduced by analysts, according to FactSet. The company’s profit was 59% more than the same period a year ago. Revenue for the quarter was $24.32 billion, which fell short of the $24.67 billion that analysts expected. CEO Elon Musk said that despite price cuts of up to 20% on some of its vehicles announced earlier this month, demand for Tesla products is strong and sales are constrained by production. Some analysts have said the price cuts were a sign Tesla's sales are softening. But so far in January, Tesla has seen the strongest orders year-to-date in its history, Musk said on a webcast with analysts. Read more: Elon Musk defiantly defends himself in Tesla tweet trial “We think demand will be good despite probably a contraction in the automotive market as a whole,” he said. “Demand far exceeds production,” Musk said, adding that Tesla is even making small price increases. Tesla said in its investor letter Wednesday that it would produce about 1.8 million vehicles this year, and Musk predicted that sales would also hit that number. Previously Tesla has said its deliveries would grow at a 50% annual rate most years. But 1.8 million would be about a 40% growth rate. Musk said it’s possible Tesla could build 2 million vehicles this year. “There would be demand for that, too,” he told analysts. On Jan. 13, the company cut prices in the U.S. and China, its two biggest markets, leading many analysts to believe that demand had fallen due to high prices and rising interest rates. Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas wrote in a note to investors early Wednesday that demand is a problem. “In our view, the price cuts are indeed a response to slowing incremental demand relative to incremental supply,” he wrote. Tesla's automotive gross profit margin, which is revenue minus cost of goods sold, fell from 30.6% in the fourth quarter of 2021 to 25.9% in the same period in 2022 as previous discounts took hold. Shares of Tesla were up slightly Wednesday, closing at $144.43. They rose another 5.5% in extended trading following the earnings report. Morningstar Equity Strategist Seth Goldstein, who covers Tesla, said Musk addressed fears about demand falling by releasing the 1.8 million sales projection. At least for this year, though, he sees Tesla's profit margins eroding further due to the price cuts. “Longer term I think the profit margins will bounce back,” he said. Average sale prices, he said, rose in the fourth quarter even with price cuts in China, Goldstein said, and the company was able to increase productivity at new factories in Texas and Germany. But that wasn't enough to offset higher raw materials and shipping costs, he said. Read more: Tesla says it sold a record 1.3 million vehicles last year Tesla also said it has rolled out its “Full Self-Driving” software to about 400,000 users, and that it recognized $324 million in revenue from “Full Self-Driving” software during the quarter. Despite its name, “Full Self-Driving” cannot drive itself, and Tesla warns drivers that they must be ready to intervene at any time. The company said it knows there are questions about macroeconomics in the face of rising interest rates. “In the near term we are accelerating our cost reduction roadmap and driving towards higher production rates, while staying focused on executing against the next phase of our roadmap,” the letter said. Musk was asked how Tesla would mitigate brand damage since his $44 billion takeover of Twitter, based on Morning Consult poll results showing a steep favorability decline among Democrats. But Musk said he has 127 million followers on the social media platform, and his following keeps growing. “That suggests that I’m reasonably popular,” he said, adding that the number of followers speaks for itself. For the full year, Tesla made $12.56 billion in net income, or an adjusted $4.07 per share. The company's stock tumbled 65% last year on fears that Musk was distracted by his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. But so far this year they’re up about 35%. Price cuts that began Jan. 13 fueled concerns on Wall Street that demand for Teslas was falling as intense competition arrives from startups and legacy automakers.

Amazon warehouse workers went on strike for the first time in Britain on Wednesday because of a dispute over pay and working conditions, adding to a wave of industrial labor action across the country fueled by the soaring cost of living. Union members voted to walk off the job for one day at the e-commerce giant's fulfillment center in Coventry, a city about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of London near Birmingham. Amanda Gearing, a senior organizer with the GMB union, said Amazon staff who worked through tough conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic are just “trying to get decent pay." Another big issue is performance targets set by an algorithm that piles extra pressure on workers, she said. The union is fighting for a bigger pay raise than the company's offer, which it says amounts to an extra 50 pence (61 cents) an hour. Amazon, which operates 30 fulfillment centers in the United Kingdom, said 2,000 workers are employed at the Coventry facility. The union says 98% of those who took part in the vote decided to strike, and Amazon said that amounts to only 178 workers. The company said it's offering “competitive pay” starting at 10.50 to 11.45 pounds an hour, depending on location. Amazon says that is a 29% increase in the minimum hourly wage for employees since 2018. Business at Seattle-based Amazon boomed during the pandemic but, like other tech companies, it has been reversing recent expansions as it faces economic uncertainty. This month, it announced 18,000 layoffs. Read more: Google axes 12,000 jobs, layoffs spread across tech sector Amazon staff are the latest group of British workers to join the picket lines as high food and energy prices drive the highest inflation in decades. Nurses, ambulance workers, train drivers, border staff, driving instructors, bus drivers, teachers and postal workers have all walked off their jobs in recent months to demand higher pay amid the cost-of-living crisis. Amazon routinely faces protests and walkouts from workers who want higher wages and better working conditions, including elsewhere in Europe, such as Spain and Germany. Last year on Black Friday, a coalition of unions and advocacy groups coordinated walkouts in more than 30 countries under a campaign called “Make Amazon Pay.” Organizers said they wanted the company to boost pay for hourly workers, extend sick leave and end its effort to fend off unionization, among other things. In October, the company suspended dozens of workers at a New York warehouse after many of them staged a protest and refused to return to their shifts following a trash compactor fire. Read more: Microsoft, amid layoffs, says quarterly profit declined 12%

Microsoft on Tuesday reported a 12% drop in profit for the October-December quarter, reflecting the economic uncertainty it said led to its decision to cut 10,000 workers. The company reported quarterly profit of $16.43 billion, or $2.20 per share. Excluding one-time items such as $800 million to pay severance to laid-off employees, the company based in Redmond, Washington, said it earned $2.32 a share, which topped Wall Street expectation for adjusted earnings of $2.29 a share. Microsoft’s stock was up more than 4% in extended trading following the release of its earnings report. Read more: Job cuts in tech sector spread, Microsoft lays off 10000 The software maker posted revenue of $52.75 billion in the October-December period, its second fiscal quarter, up 2% from the same period a year ago. Analysts polled by FactSet expected Microsoft to post revenue of $52.99 billion for the quarter. Microsoft last week blamed “macroeconomic conditions and changing customer priorities” for its decision to cut nearly 5% of its global workforce. It’s one of a number of tech companies, including Google, Amazon, Salesforce and Facebook parent Meta, to announce mass layoffs. Microsoft's personal computing business, centered on its Windows software, was widely expected to continue a deterioration that began earlier last year due to economic uncertainties and crimped demand. Quarterly sales from that segment dropped 19% to $14.24 billion, the company said Tuesday. The company gets licensing revenue from PC manufacturers who install its Windows operating system on their products. Market research firm Gartner reported that worldwide PC shipments in the October-December quarter declined 28.5% from the same period of 2021, the steepest quarterly decline since Gartner began tracking the market in the 1990s. Read more: Google axes 12000 jobs, layoffs spread across tech sector Among the factors reducing consumer demand for PCs were increased inflation, higher interest rates, the expectation of a global recession and the fact that many people already bought new computers during the COVID-19 pandemic, Gartner said. With a weak PC market, analysts were closely watching for results from Microsoft's other big business segments — namely, its cloud-computing division, where sales grew 18% to $21.51 billion. Revenue also grew from the company's workplace software segment — which includes the Office suite of products — by 7% to $17 billion. In a bid to further integrate the latest advances in artificial technology into its products, Microsoft on Monday announced a “multiyear, multibillion dollar investment” in the artificial intelligence startup OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT and other tools that can write readable text and computer code and generate new images.

Over the past few years, a number of companies have attempted to act as the cryptocurrency equivalent of a bank, promising lucrative returns to customers who deposited their bitcoin or other digital assets. In a span of less than 12 months, nearly all of the biggest of those companies have failed spectacularly. Last week, Genesis filed Chapter 11, joining Voyager Digital, Celsius and BlockFi on the list of companies that have either filed for bankruptcy protection or gone out of business. This subset of the industry grew as cryptocurrency enthusiasts were looking to build their own parallel world in finance untethered to traditional banking and government-issued currencies. But lacking safeguards, and without a government backstop, these companies failed in domino-like fashion. What started with one crypto company collapsing in May spilled over onto one crypto lending firm and then the next. Read more: Binimoy says it can put an end to illegal digital transactions Further, government regulators started clamping down on crypto lending companies’ ability to advertise their services, saying that their products should have been regulated by securities regulators. The collapse is reminiscent of the 2008 financial crisis, but on a much smaller scale. There are no worries that the collapse of these crypto firms will impact the broader economy. Crypto lending companies like Voyager, Genesis and BlockFi were trying to do what banks do in traditional finance: take in crypto deposits, give depositors a dividend on their stored crypto, and then make loans to earn a profit. It’s what the banking industry has done for hundreds of years, but with government-sanctioned currencies. The biggest drawback to crypto lending is the lack of safeguards. There is no deposit insurance, government stopgap, or even a privately run entity to protect depositors if their crypto bank were to fail. This was fine when crypto prices were moving higher because the collateral banks were accepting in exchange for the loans was increasing in value. Read more: Digital payments to boost Bangladesh GDP by 1.7pc: Report Demand for crypto deposits was so high, firms were willing to pay a yield of 10% of more on depositors’ crypto holdings. But then crypto prices started falling and kept falling. Bitcoin, for instance, plunged from over $65,000 in November 2021 to below $17,000 last November. As a result, much of the underlying collateral these firms were holding became worth less than the loans they had issued, effectively making several “crypto banks” insolvent. The first two crypto lending firms to collapse were Celsius and Voyager Digital. The companies had been exposed to both falling crypto prices as well as risky loans made to crypto hedge funds like Three Arrows Capital, which was forced to liquidate and go out of business in June. BlockFi, another crypto lender, turned to then-crypto giant FTX and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried for a rescue. Bankman-Fried gave BlockFi a financial lifeline, one of several moves that earned Bankman-Fried plaudits as a savior or financial backstop for the crypto industry. But FTX’s own bankruptcy in November, caused by high-risk lending to its affiliated hedge fund Alameda Research, caused BlockFi’s financial lifeline to wither away. BlockFi’s own bankruptcy became an inevitability. In a show of how intertwined these crypto lenders became, Genesis made billions in loans to Alameda. Saddled with bad loans, many of these high-tech firms experienced a very old phenomenon: depositors wanted their money back, and a bank run started. WHAT'S NEXT? The tens of thousands of customers at these crypto lending firms are now waiting to see if their assets can be recovered or found in bankruptcy court, which could take months or even years. At Genesis, more than $900 million in customer funds are now locked up in bankruptcy. It’s not clear whether crypto lending will see a return any time soon. After FTX failed, crypto exchange giant Binance announced it would start its own fund to provide rescue financing for a crypto firm in trouble, an idea that has its origins in government-sponsored central banking or deposit insurance. Further, the crypto industry seems to coming around to the idea of some sort of regulation, which would provide a minimum of safeguards to depositors or investors that does not exist at the moment. There were several bills pending in Congress last year, but with the change in control to the Republicans in the House of Representatives, it's not clear whether the broader GOP has an interest in regulating the crypto industry.

Elon Musk returned to federal court Monday in San Francisco, testifying that he believed he had locked up financial backing to take Tesla private during 2018 meetings with representatives from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund — although no specific funding amount or price was discussed. The 51-year-old billionaire Tesla CEO and Twitter owner is facing a class action lawsuit filed by Tesla investors alleging he misled them with a tweet saying funding was secured to take his electric car company private — for $420 per share. But the deal never came close to happening, and the tweet resulted in a $40 million settlement with securities regulators. Read more: Elon Musk depicted as liar, visionary in Tesla tweet trial The trial hinges on the question of whether a pair of tweets that Musk posted on Aug. 7, 2018, damaged Tesla shareholders during a 10-day period leading up to Musk's admission that the buyout he had envisioned wasn’t going to happen. Speaking in a soft halting tone, Musk said Monday he “had trouble sleeping last night and unfortunately I am not at my best.” He added that it was important for jurors to know that he “felt that funding was secured” due to his ownership of “SpaceX stock alone." “Just as I sold stock in Tesla to buy Twitter. ... I didn't want to sell Tesla stock but I did sell Tesla stock,” he said of the sale to make up for lack of funding from other sources for his $44 billion deal to take Twitter private. Musk sold nearly $23 billion worth of his car company’s shares between last April, when he started building a position in Twitter, and December. “My SpaceX shares alone would have meant that funding was secured,” Musk said of the 2018 tweets. Even before Musk first took the stand on Friday, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen had declared that jurors can consider those two tweets to be false, leaving them to decide whether Musk deliberately deceived investors and whether his statements saddled them with losses. Musk has previously contended he entered into the Securities and Exchange Commission settlement under duress and maintained he believed he had locked up financial backing for a Tesla buyout during meetings with representatives from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Read more: Elon Musk sells $3.58B worth of Tesla stock, purpose unknown At a July 31, 2018 meeting, the Saudi Public Investment Fund’s Yasir Al-Rumayyan “confirmed unequivocally that they would support Tesla going private. That was part of what ‘funding secure’ meant,” Musk said Monday. “But in addition there was SpaceX stock, which could also be used.” In the first of the 2018 tweets, Musk stated “funding secured” for what would have been a $72 billion — or $420 per share — buyout of Tesla at a time when the electric automaker was still grappling with production problems and was worth far less than it is now. Musk followed up a few hours later with another tweet suggesting a deal was imminent. Nicholas Porritt, a lawyer representing Tesla shareholders, asked Musk if he “went with 420 because it was a joke your girlfriend enjoys.” Musk replied he thinks there is “some karma” around the number 420 — which is also a slang reference to marijuana — although he added he doesn't know “if it's good karma or bad karma at this point.” He then said the number was a "coincidence" and it represented a 20% premium of Tesla's share price at the time. After it became apparent that the money wasn’t in place to take Tesla private, Musk stepped down as Tesla’s chairman while remaining CEO as part of the SEC settlement, without acknowledging wrongdoing. On Friday, Musk had testified he thinks it is possible to be “absolutely truthful” on Twitter. "But can you be comprehensive? Of course not.” On Monday, he again emphasized: “My tweet was truthful, absolutely truthful." Asked by his lawyer, Alex Spiro, if he understood the charges against him, Musk said he's being "accused of fraud. It’s outrageous.” Shares of Tesla climbed $8.76. or 6.6%, to $142.18 on Monday. He said he never deceived investors.