Business Extra Podcast: Musk's tweets put Tesla in the spotlight

Electric car maker's chief hits headlines again and currencies take a wild ride

In this week's Business Extra Podcast, Assistant Business Editor Chris Nelson and The National's Andy Scott discuss Elon Musk's increasingly erratic behaviour. The maverick billionaire and CEO of Tesla tweeted last week that he was considering taking his company private - a move that has caught the attention of the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

The mercurial genius may have been the inspiration for Robert Downey Jr's Iron Man character but right now he could do well to avoid the limelight. He tweeted that he planned take the electric car maker private at $420 a share, valuing the company around $72 billlion, a 20 per cent premium on the share price that day - and crucially said he had the "funding in place".

As the car company has only posted two quarterly profits since its float eight years ago and last year lost over $2 billion so far, it is not certain how he might manage it.

The current currency volatility in emerging markets and the British pound are also under the microscope - a boon for UK expats sending cash back to the UK, as Sudesh Giriyan, chief operating officer on the UAE-based international remittances company Xpress Money later explains.

Listen here:

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