Elon Musk is now not the world’s richest man, in line with Forbes. Bernard Arnault, the chairman of LVMH — the conglomerate behind luxurious manufacturers like Louis Vuitton, Hennessy, Bulgari, and many different manufacturers you see at overpriced airport boutiques — is. Bloomberg stated Tuesday {that a} agency tied to LVMH will likely be merging with Lotus to take the carmaker public, presumably emboldened by Porsche going public in September. This would possibly, on paper, pit the world’s two richest folks in opposition to one another in a battle for the EV way forward for the world, since Lotus is all-in on EVs now, however that appears extra like a enjoyable thought train than actuality.
That’s partially as a result of Tesla and Geely-owned Lotus are attempting to do various things. Tesla is making an attempt to scale as much as promoting hundreds of thousands and hundreds of thousands of EVs, whereas Lotus is making an attempt to scale as much as merely promoting 1000’s of vehicles. Additional, Elon Musk is a little more concerned together with his automobile firm (regardless of the continuing misadventure with Twitter) than Arnault could be. Bloomberg describes the agency Lotus is merging with, L Catterton Asia Acquisition Corp, as, “the personal fairness operations of Arnault’s luxury-goods powerhouse LVMH [that] mixed with the US funding agency Catterton in 2016,” which makes it sound like one thing that the world’s richest man in all probability forgot existed.
At any price, L Catterton Asia Acquisition Corp is definitely solely merging with Lotus Tech, which is the EV a part of Group Lotus. Lotus Tech is making the Eletre, the SUV you see above, which it calls “the world’s first electrical hyper-SUV.” Reuters additionally says that entities that already personal Lotus Tech, which is generally Geely and some different shareholders, will preserve their stakes in Lotus Tech, and that stake will quantity to 89.7 p.c of the corporate after the merger with L Catterton Asia Acquisition Corp.
Which makes me suppose that that is largely a money seize. Though, when you’ve ever dreamed of proudly owning inventory in Lotus, this may very well be your huge likelihood. Reuters says that the mixed firm will listing on the Nasdaq trade, with the ticker image “LOT.” Sometime, someone would possibly even get round to mentioning it to the world’s richest man.