The Delhi High Court on Friday restored the mandate of <keyword id="19934453" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="ioa" source="keywords">IOA</keyword>'s ad hoc committee for <keyword id="19894846" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="wrestling-federation-of-india" source="keywords">Wrestling Federation of India</keyword> on a plea seeking a stay on the functioning of the <keyword id="19894852" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="WFI" source="keywords">WFI</keyword> in its present form and prevent it from undertaking any activity as a national federation for the sport. While passing the interim order on the plea by celebrated wrestlers <keyword id="19910804" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Bajrang-Punia" source="keywords">Bajrang Punia</keyword>, <keyword id="19895499" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="Vinesh-Phogat" source="keywords">Vinesh Phogat</keyword>, <keyword id="19895495" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Sakshi-Malik" source="keywords">Sakshi Malik</keyword> and her husband Satyawart Kadian, Justice Sachin Datta said it was open to the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) re-constituting the committee. The wrestlers, who were at the forefront of last year's protest at Jantar Mantar demanding the arrest of outgoing Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) chief <keyword id="19910802" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Brij-Bhushan-Sharan-Singh" source="keywords">Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh</keyword> for alleged sexual harassment of seven women grapplers, had moved the high court earlier this year for setting aside and declaring as illegal the elections held to elect the office bearers of the federation held in December. Sanjay Singh, a Brij Bhushan loyalist, was elected the new WFI chief in the polls held on December 21, 2023. In their plea for interim relief, the petitioners had sought a stay on the functioning of the WFI in its present form and prevent it from undertaking any activity as a national federation for the sport of wrestling. The Centre had suspended the WFI on December 24, 2023, three days after it elected the new office bearers, for allegedly not following the provisions of its own constitution while taking decisions, and requested IOA to constitute an ad-hoc committee to manage and control its affairs. In February, world wrestling body UWW lifted the suspension, leading to IOA also dissolving its ad-hoc committee for wrestling in March. On March 4, the court had issued notice to the central government, WFI and the ad-hoc committee of WFI on the petition by the top grapplers.

Delhi HC restores mandate of IOA ad hoc panel on plea seeking stay on WFI's functioning

The <keyword id="19894846" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Wrestling-Federation-of-India" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="Wrestling Federation of India" meta.hostid="153" meta.entityid="Wrestling Federation of India">Wrestling Federation of India</keyword> (<keyword id="19894852" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="wfi" source="keywords">WFI</keyword>) on Friday said it will challenge the Delhi <keyword id="20030450" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="High-Court-order" source="keywords">High Court order</keyword> that restored the mandate of <keyword id="22809836" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="IOAs-ad-hoc-committee" source="keywords">IOA's ad-hoc committee</keyword> to manage the affairs of the sports body, saying the "interference" could jeopardize the participation of <keyword id="19933029" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="Indian-wrestlers" source="keywords">Indian wrestlers</keyword> at the upcoming <keyword id="20200346" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="World-Championships" source="keywords">World Championships</keyword>. The latest order came on a plea seeking a stay on the functioning of the WFI and prevent it from undertaking any activity as a national federation for the sport. Justice Sachin Datta while passing the interim order on the plea by wrestlers <keyword id="19910804" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Bajrang-Punia" source="keywords">Bajrang Punia</keyword>, <keyword id="19895499" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Vinesh-Phogat" source="keywords">Vinesh Phogat</keyword>, <keyword id="19895495" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Sakshi-Malik" source="keywords">Sakshi Malik</keyword> and her husband Satyawart Kadian, said it was open to the <keyword id="19896477" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Indian-Olympic-Association" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="Indian Olympic Association" meta.hostid="153" meta.entityid="Indian Olympic Association">Indian Olympic Association</keyword> (IOA) re-constituting the committee which was earlier led by Bhupender Singh Bajwa. The IOA had dissolved the ad-hoc panel on April 4 while UWW had lifted its suspension on February 13 this year after WFI conducted its elections. "We are going to take it to double bench. The IOA had dissolved the ad-hoc panel . We will also approach world governing body UWW and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). They had warned that outside interference may impact out athletes," WFI President Sanjay Singh told PTI. "Two World Championships are approaching. Indian wrestlers' participation could be blocked," he feared. The U-17 World championship is set to be held in Amman, Jordan from August 19-25 while the U-20 World championship is scheduled in Pontevedra, Spain from September 2-8. UWW President in his April 25 letter to WFI President had made it clear that ad-hoc panel running the show was not acceptable to them. "In case any decision or order should be made against your federation, and a third party be designated to run the daily affairs of our sport in India in violation of the UWW Statutes, UWW would have no other option than to re-impose a temporary suspension of your federation until further notice, and which, this time, could maybe include your athletes,"UWW president Lalovic wrote. The Centre had suspended the WFI on December 24, 2023, three days after it elected the new office bearers, for allegedly not following the provisions of its own constitution while taking decisions, and requested IOA to constitute an ad-hoc committee to manage its affairs. On March 4, the court had issued notice to the central government, WFI and the ad-hoc committee on the petition filed by the top grapplers.

WFI to challenge High Court order, says Indian wrestlers' participation in upcoming Worlds in danger

Following the delay in the verdict on wrestler <keyword id="19895499" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="Vinesh-Phogat" source="keywords">Vinesh Phogat</keyword>'s disqualification in the Paris Olympics 2024, <keyword id="110074" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Wrestling-Federation-of-India" source="Orion">Wrestling Federation of India</keyword> Vice-President <keyword id="22782425" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Jai-Prakash-Chaudhary" source="Orion">Jai Prakash Chaudhary</keyword> said that he thinks that the decision will come in favour of the athlete. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (<keyword id="20253262" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="CAS" source="keywords">CAS</keyword>) has further delayed the verdict on Indian wrestler Vinesh Phogat's appeal regarding her disqualification from the women's 50kg final at the Paris Olympics to August 16. According to the Indian Olympic Association (<keyword id="19934453" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="IOA" source="keywords">IOA</keyword>), the verdict, originally scheduled for Tuesday, August 13 at 9:30 pm IST, has been delayed to August 16. "The CAS ad hoc division president has allowed Hon. Dr Annabelle Bennett, Sole Arbitrator in the Vinesh Phogat vs. United World Wrestling (UWW) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) matter, an extension until 6-00 p.m. (Paris time) on Friday, August 16, 2024," IOA said in a statement on Tuesday. "It shouldn't have happened. But, I think something in the favour of Vinesh is going to come... It seems that there are some powers involved in it and she will get the medal... I'll say that her staffs are at fault. It's their duty how to decrease the weight. But, let's see what happens on August 16... Big advocates are there, PM Modi has also taken cognisance and I think the decision will be in our favour..." Jai Prakash said while speaking to ANI. CAS has established an ad hoc division in Paris, led by President Michael Lenard from the US, to handle Olympic cases. This division operates within the Paris judicial court in the 17th arrondissement. Vinesh Phogat was disqualified on the morning of the Paris Olympics final for exceeding the 50kg weight limit. During the weigh-in, she was found to be 100 grams over the limit. Following her disqualification, Phogat had on August 7 requested CAS to award her the silver medal. CAS had previously extended the deadline to August 13. Vinesh had reached the gold medal match by defeating Cuba's Yusneylis Guzman Lopez 5-0 in the semi-finals. The 29-year-old was set to face Sarah Ann Hildebrandt of the United States for the gold but was disqualified for the weight limit breach. A day after her disqualification, Vinesh also announced her decision to retire from wrestling. After Vinesh failed to breach the qualification mark, the Indian Olympic Association members and officials came under scrutiny. IOA President PT Usha on Sunday clarified that the responsibility of weight management of athletes in sports like wrestling, weightlifting, boxing and judo is that of each athlete and his or her coach and not that of the IOA-appointed Chief Medical Officer Dr Dinshaw Pardiwala and his team. Usha said that each Indian athlete in the Paris 2024 <keyword id="20028513" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Olympic-Games" source="keywords">Olympic Games</keyword> in such sport had his or her own support team. These support teams have been working with the athletes over so many years, as per a statement from IOA. CAS has established an ad hoc division in Paris, led by President Michael Lenard from the US, to handle Olympic cases. This division operates within the Paris judicial court in the 17th arrondissement.

"Something in favour of Vinesh is going to come": WFI vice president on Phogat's disqualification verdict

New Delhi: <keyword id="20115485" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Harish-Salve" source="keywords">Harish Salve</keyword>, a renowned Indian lawyer, will represent the <keyword id="19896477" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Indian-Olympic-Association" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="Indian Olympic Association" meta.hostid="153" meta.entityid="Indian Olympic Association">Indian Olympic Association</keyword> (<keyword id="19934453" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="IOA" source="keywords">IOA</keyword>) in the case concerning the disqualification of wrestler <keyword id="19895499" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="Vinesh-Phogat" source="keywords">Vinesh Phogat</keyword> from the <keyword id="20006192" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Paris-Olympics" source="keywords">Paris Olympics</keyword>. Salve's expertise will be crucial in addressing the legal and procedural aspects of the dispute. Salve, former Solicitor General of India and King's Counsel, confirmed to that he has been engaged by the IOA to represent <keyword id="20040071" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="phogat" source="keywords">Phogat</keyword> at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). The ad hoc hearing at CAS is scheduled to start on Friday, August 9 at 9:00 AM Paris time (12:30 PM IST). The CAS has established an ad hoc division in Paris, led by President Michael Lenard from the US, to handle cases during the Olympics. This division is located within the Paris judicial court in the 17th arrondissement. Following her disqualification from the Paris Olympics final, Vinesh Phogat announced her retirement from wrestling on Thursday. In an emotional post on X, Phogat expressed her sense of defeat and gratitude, stating, "Maa kushti (wrestling) won against me, I lost. Forgive me, your dream and my courage have been broken. I don't have any more strength now. Goodbye Wrestling 2001-2024. I will always be indebted to you all for forgiveness." <keyword id="19894846" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Wrestling-Federation-of-India" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="Wrestling Federation of India" meta.hostid="153" meta.entityid="Wrestling Federation of India">Wrestling Federation of India</keyword> President, Sanjay Singh, responded by urging Phogat to reconsider her decision. Speaking to ANI, Singh emphasized that Phogat's announcement seemed hasty and suggested that she should discuss her retirement with her family, the Federation, and other sports officials upon returning to India. He highlighted her significant contributions and performance in the sport, indicating that it would be premature to make such a decision in the heat of the moment.

India's top lawyer Harish Salve to represent IOA in Vinesh Phogat's CAS hearing

The <keyword id="20348023" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Court-of-Arbitration-for-Sport" source="keywords">Court of Arbitration for Sport</keyword> (<keyword id="20253262" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="CAS" source="keywords">CAS</keyword>) ad hoc division has reportedly dismissed the application filed by Indian wrestler <keyword id="19895499" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="Vinesh-Phogat" source="keywords">Vinesh Phogat</keyword> for a <keyword id="19920397" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="silver-medal" source="keywords">silver medal</keyword> in the <keyword id="22791336" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="womens-50kg-event" source="keywords">women's 50kg event</keyword> at the Paris Olympics. This decision was announced on Wednesday, following Phogat's <keyword id="19902399" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="disqualification" source="keywords">disqualification</keyword> last week for exceeding the 50kg weight limit. CAS issued a statement, saying, "The application filed by Vinesh Phogat on August 7 has been dismissed," as per the agency reports. Vinesh Phogat was found to be 100 grams over the limit during the weigh-in prior to the women's 50kg final, leading to her disqualification. She was set to compete against Sarah Ann Hildebrandt of the United States for the gold medal. After her disqualification, 29-year-old Phogat requested the CAS on August 7 to award her the silver medal instead. The <keyword id="19896477" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Indian-Olympic-Association" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="Indian Olympic Association" meta.hostid="261" meta.entityid="Indian Olympic Association">Indian Olympic Association</keyword> (IOA) initially announced that the verdict would be given on Tuesday, August 13 at 9:30 pm IST. However, it was delayed to August 16. Harish Salve, a renowned Indian lawyer and former Solicitor General of India and King's Counsel, represented the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) in this landmark case. Before her disqualification, Vinesh had reached the gold medal match by defeating Cuba's Yusneylis Guzman Lopez 5-0 in the semi-finals. The decision came as a blow to Phogat, who, following her disqualification, made a shocking decision to retire from wrestling altogether. In an emotional post on X, Phogat expressed her sense of defeat and gratitude, stating, "Maa kushti (wrestling) won against me, I lost. Forgive me, your dream and my courage have been broken. I don't have any more strength now. Goodbye Wrestling 2001-2024. I will always be indebted to you all for forgiveness." Earlier this week, Wrestling Federation of India Vice-President Jai Prakash Chaudhary hoped that the decision will come in favour of the athlete. However, despite a strong case presented by the IOA, the appeal has reportedly been dismissed. The entire episode led to many sportspersons coming out in support of Phogat, while some criticized the IOA officials for the athlete's failure to meet the weight requirements. However, IOA President PT Usha on Sunday clarified that the responsibility of weight management of athletes in sports like wrestling, weightlifting, boxing and judo is that of each athlete and his or her coach. (With inputs from ANI)

Vinesh Phogat's silver hopes dashed! CAS dismisses Indian wrestler's plea for silver medal at Paris Olympics 2024

Her long-cherished Olympic dream shattered by a cruel twist of fate, <keyword id="19895499" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="Vinesh-Phogat" source="keywords">Vinesh Phogat</keyword> on Thursday bid adieu to her international wrestling career, saying she doesn't have the strength to continue anymore. The 29-year-old, who was disqualified for being 100gm overweight ahead of her 50kg category gold medal bout in the Olympics on Wednesday, announced her decision on social media, seeking forgiveness from everyone who supported her. Addressing her mother Premlata, Vinesh wrote, "Ma, wrestling has won, I have lost. Please forgive me, your dreams and my courage, everything is broken." "I don't have any more strength now. Goodbye wrestling 2001-2024. I shall be indebted to you all. Forgive (me)," added the two-time world championships bronze-medallist. <div type="twitter" handle="Phogat_Vinesh" handlename="Phogat_Vinesh" favoritecount="0" retweetcount="0" id="1821332432701779982"></div> Her stunning decision comes a day after Vinesh appealed against her disqualification from the Olympic finals on Wednesday in the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS), demanding that she be awarded a joint silver medal. An ad-hoc division of the CAS, which has been set up here for resolution of any disputes arising during the Olympic Games or during a period of 10 days preceding the Opening Ceremony, will take up her appeal in the next few hours. She spent a good part of the day at a polyclinic inside the Games village owing to severe dehydration caused by her desperate measures to make the cut, which included going hungry, avoiding fluids and staying up all night to sweat it out. Cuban wrestler Yusneylis Guzman Lopez, who lost to Vinesh in the semifinals, replaced her in the final against American Sarah Ann Hildebrandt. Hildebrandt won the bout to claim gold and Vinesh is now banking on CAS to be a joint silver-medallist with Lopez. However, the sport's international governing body, United World Wrestling (UWW) has made it clear on its part that the current weigh-in rule will not be changed as of now. "On IOA's suggestion that a wrestler's results from the day on which the athlete met the weigh-in requirements should not be disqualified, the UWW President was sympathetic. "UWW will also discuss the suggestion at an appropriate platform but it could not be done retrospectively," the world body said in a statement late on Wednesday after its President Nenad Lalovic met IOA chief P T Usha. Vinesh had scripted history by becoming the first Indian woman wrestler to reach the gold medal bout in her category on Tuesday night. She was assured of at least a silver medal before the disqualification. Vinesh is a three-time Olympian and has won gold medals in both the Asian and Commonwealth Games. For the past one year, she had also been the face of fierce protests against former Wrestling Federation of India head Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who has been accused of sexual harassment by women grapplers. Vinesh, who has always competed in the 53kg category, was forced to come down to 50kg just months before the Games after the Paris quota place in that division was locked by Antim Panghal. Panghal lost in the opening round itself and is facing deportation after trying to facilitate her sister Nisha's access to the Games Village on her accreditation card.

"Ma, wrestling has won, I have lost": Vinesh Phogat says goodbye to wrestling in a heartbreaking post

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Donald Trump's criminal case for holding onto classified documents has been dismissed.</li><li>The judge ruled that the appointment of Jack Smith as special prosecutor was unconstitutional.</li></ul>The federal judge overseeing former President Donald Trump's criminal case over the hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago has dismissed <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/read-superseding-indictment-against-trump-mar-a-lago-documents-case-2023-7">the charges</a> against him.US District Judge Aileen Cannon — who was appointed to the bench by Trump while he was president — ruled Monday that the Justice Department's appointment of Jack Smith as special counsel to prosecute the case was unconstitutional.The case was widely perceived to be the most straightforward of Trump's four criminal cases. Smith alleged that Trump took documents containing government secrets when he left the White House in January 2021 and stored many of them at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, where he lives.Prosecutors said Trump repeatedly stonewalled federal agencies that tried to get the documents back and directed his employees to lie and mislead federal investigators — which ultimately led to a dramatic FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago in 2022.<a target="_blank" class="" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653.672.0.pdf">Cannon's 93-page ruling</a> Monday doesn't call any of those events into question. Rather, the Florida judge ruled that the appointment of Smith violated the US Constitution's Appointments Clause.Smith was appointed to the special-counsel role by Attorney General Merrick Garland, who directs Justice Department funds to his office. According to Cannon's decision, however, an office granted such far-reaching powers would need to be explicitly designated by Congress, which would have to fund the office by statute and confirm someone into the role.The solution, Cannon wrote, was to dismiss the indictment against Trump."For more than 18 months, Special Counsel Smith's investigation and prosecution has been financed by substantial funds drawn from the Treasury without statutory authorization, and to try to rewrite history at this point seems near impossible," Cannon wrote.The decision also dismissed the charges against Trump's two codefendants, Waltine Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira, employees who prosecutors said conspired with Trump to obstruct the criminal investigation and keep the documents hidden. A political action committee controlled by Trump had been <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-legal-fees-pac-donor-money-personal-cases-2024-2">paying the law firms representing them</a>.On Truth Social, Trump — recovering from an injury after <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ex-secret-service-agents-how-trump-assassin-could-fire-shots-2024-7">he was shot in an assassination attempt Saturday</a> — wrote that all four criminal cases against him should be dismissed, along with <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-trial-verdict-e-jean-carroll-defamation-damages-2024-1">E. Jean Carroll's</a> sexual-abuse and defamation claims against him."As we move forward in Uniting our Nation after the horrific events on Saturday, this dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts," he wrote.Trump claimed without evidence that the cases were coordinated by the Justice Department and political in nature, even though the Manhattan and Georgia indictments were brought by local prosecutors, and <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-liable-rape-e-jean-carroll-jury-verdict-2023-5">a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and defaming her</a> in a civil trial.<h2 id="08edee34-0b87-431a-baed-d67b95cecc4c">The Supreme Court could take up the case</h2>Cannon's Monday decision will almost certainly be appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and, after that, could be taken up by the US Supreme Court.The legality of Justice Department special counsels has been the subject of some debate over the past two decades. The statute that governed the independent-counsel roles in the Iran-Contra affair during Ronald Reagan's presidency and the Whitewater controversy during Bill Clinton's presidency expired in 1999. Since then, the US attorney general has appointed special counsels with less authority while relying on internal Justice Department regulations.Defense lawyers in special-counsel investigations have routinely argued the appointment of special counsels is unconstitutional. Since a special counsel can impanel grand juries and bring indictments in any district in the country, they are effectively an "Officer of the United States," as described by the Constitution's Appointments Clause, a role that needs to be approved and funded by Congress, defense lawyers have argued. This Justice Department has argued that the arrangement is permissible because special counsels are appointed and overseen by the attorney general, who does have those powers.As if to emphasize the point, Smith's spokesperson, Peter Carr, said in a statement Monday afternoon that the Justice Department granted permission for Smith to appeal Cannon's decision."The dismissal of the case deviates from the uniform conclusion of all previous courts to have considered the issue that the Attorney General is statutorily authorized to appoint a Special Counsel," Carr wrote in the statement. "The Justice Department has authorized the Special Counsel to appeal the court's order."In her ruling, Cannon took a swipe at the executive branch in general, writing that federal agencies should be more prudent in appointing special counsels under their internal regulations."In the end, it seems the Executive's growing comfort in appointing 'regulatory' special counsels in the more recent era has followed an ad hoc pattern with little judicial scrutiny," she wrote.<div type="image" title="A photo of a smiling Donald Trump with an American flag behind him." height="1667" width="2500" msid="111762049" hostid="261"></div>When the Supreme Court heard arguments on presidential immunity earlier this year, some legal groups and Trump's allies urged the court to consider the legality of special counsels as well.While the Supreme Court ultimately didn't hear arguments on the issue — although it granted <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/supreme-court-trump-immunity-january-6-election-ruling-decision-2024-5">broad presidential immunity</a> in criminal cases — Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a concurring opinion that he would find many types of special counsels unconstitutional.None of the other eight justices signed onto Thomas' opinion, which Cannon cited three separate times in her ruling Monday. And lower courts have routinely upheld the legality of special counsels in cases involving Robert Mueller and others.The immunity decision stemmed from a separate case overseen by Smith, in Washington, DC, over Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. Trump's lawyers will now likely argue about the legality of Smith's appointment in that case, almost certainly causing more delays.A jury in Manhattan <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-hush-money-trial-verdict-2024-5">found Trump guilty in May</a> of falsifying documents to illegally interfere with the 2016 presidential election. Trump's sentencing in that case has been put on hold as <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-judge-juan-merchan-manhattan-mental-health-court-wednesday-2024-5">the judge</a> weighs whether the verdict should stand following the Supreme Court's presidential-immunity decision. Trump's lawyers <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-now-says-scotus-immunity-voids-entire-hush-money-indictment-2024-7">argue that the entire case should be tossed</a> because it was "tainted" with evidence that should not have been included under the Supreme Court ruling.Trump's fourth criminal case, over attempts to overturn the election results in Georgia, is unlikely to be affected by the special-counsel ruling, but it may be further delayed by the Supreme Court's immunity decision. It's <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-georgia-election-interference-fani-willis-appeals-court-2024-5">stalled</a> as an appeals court weighs how to proceed after the case's top prosecutor had an apparent romantic relationship with a subordinate.<h2 id="a3c20954-ae18-4f00-8095-5acb59879297">Cannon's decisions have often favored Trump</h2>Cannon has handled the documents case slowly, making decisions that have often gone Trump's way. In May, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-mar-a-lago-document-case-delayed-indefinitely-2024-5">she delayed the trial indefinitely</a>, writing that she had too many pretrial issues she still needed to decide.Before the indictment was filed, Cannon oversaw a legal dispute over the FBI's execution of the search warrant. She took the unprecedented step of appointing a federal judge in Brooklyn as a special master to sift through all the evidence the FBI collected and decide what could be protected under executive privilege — even though Trump was not president at the time.A three-judge panel at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals — composed of two Trump appointees and one George W. Bush appointee — reversed the ruling and said they could not possibly understand why Trump would need to hold onto classified documents."For our part, we cannot discern why the Plaintiff would have an individual interest in or need for any of the one hundred documents with classification markings," <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/federal-panel-feds-resume-review-classified-records-mar-a-lago-2022-9">the panel wrote at the time</a>.Cannon has also entertained motions that would typically be dismissed out of hand by other federal judges. For some motions, she's permitted amicus briefs — arguments from unrelated third parties — which are uncommon in federal criminal cases.In Monday's decision, Cannon wrote that <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cannon-suggests-special-counsel-should-have-taken-her-more-seriously-2024-7">Smith's prosecutorial team should have taken her more seriously</a>."Both the Special Counsel and Defendant Trump submitted briefing; amicus briefs were received; and a lengthy hearing occurred," she wrote. "Yet startlingly, the Special Counsel submitted nothing on the topic of the proper remedy for the Appointments Clause issue."Cannon's decision may end up being good news for Hunter Biden, who was convicted of gun-related crimes last month in a case brought by the special counsel David Weiss. His lawyers had signaled <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hunter-biden-may-lose-trial-politics-appeals-2024-6">they would file an appeal challenging the legality</a> of appointing a special counsel in the first place.This story has been updated.

Florida judge dismisses classified-documents case against Trump, ruling appointment of Jack Smith was unconstitutional

The <keyword id="6357743" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="ngt">NGT</keyword> has imposed an interim penalty of Rs 10 lakh on the Karnataka government over pollution in the <keyword id="8384137" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Kithiganahalli-Lake">Kithiganahalli Lake</keyword>, near Bommasandra suburb in Bengaluru, saying criminal offence is being committed by the authorities in not stopping the discharge of pollutants into the water bodies. A bench headed by <keyword id="146133" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="National-Green-Tribunal">National Green Tribunal</keyword> (NGT) Chairperson Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel also slapped a fine of Rs 5 lakh on the municipal council of Bommasandra for failure to discharge its duties. "Failure of important constitutional obligation by the municipal council as well as apathy and defiance of orders of this tribunal and the Supreme Court by state authorities is at the cost of environment and public health and is very unfortunate for which prompt remedial actions must be taken and accountability of erring officers fixed," the bench said. The NGT said only writing a letter is not compliance of the law and the stand taken by the authorities concerned can hardly be described as a responsible one. Discharge of untreated sewage into water bodies causes a huge damage and the prevention of the same is the duty of the state authorities as the trustees of people's rights, the tribunal said, adding that such duty is being clearly breached. "In view of the above for the damage caused to the environment, the state of Karnataka and Municipal Council, Bommasandra are held liable to pay interim compensation assessed on ad-hoc basis at Rs. 15 lakh. "Karnataka is liable to pay Rs 10 lakh and the Municipal Council, Bommasandra is liable to pay Rs 5 lakh. Final compensation will be determined after hearing the state and the municipal council," the bench said. If necessary, an expert committee will be appointed and it would be open to the state and the municipal council to recover the amount from the erring officers, the tribunal further said. The amount of interim compensation is liable to be deposited with the CPCB within one month and maybe spent for restoration of the environment, the bench said. The green panel was hearing a plea filed by Sanjay Rao and others seeking action against pollution in the Kithiganahalli Lake due to dumping of garbage. SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/lg-polymers-india-has-absolute-liability-for-gas-leak-says-ngt/articleshow/76188463.cms">LG Polymers India has absolute liability for gas leak, says NGT</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/ngt-asks-wbpcb-govt-to-file-reports-on-disposal-of-covid-19-biomedical-waste/articleshow/75833387.cms">NGT asks WBPCB, govt to file reports on disposal of COVID-19 biomedical waste</a>

NGT imposes ₹10 lakh fine on Karnataka government over pollution in Kithiganahalli Lake

Whatever you might think of Twitter, it's hard to watch Elon Musk clumsily flay it alive to "<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/10/elon-musk-tells-twitter-staff-he-sold-tesla-stock-to-save-twitter.html">save it</a>."Twitter was far from perfect before Musk took over, but it wasn't in financial distress. Revenue growth was <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitters-advertising-exodus-accelerates-despite-outreach-from-elon-musk-11668262920?mod=article_inline">healthy but slowing</a>, and management had been looking at head-count reductions to restore skinny profits while it pushed for ways to boost sales. Normal stuff.That changed overnight when Musk took over. He dismissed Twitter's top management and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-twitter-scrapped-board-of-directors-parag-agrawal-private-2022-10">its board of directors</a>. Most of Twitter's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-says-no-more-layoffs-no-move-to-texas-in-twitter-meeting-2022-11">employees</a> and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-firing-contractors-elon-musk-report-2022-11?r=US&amp;IR=T">contractors</a> have <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/pro-elon-musk-twitter-employee-fired-thankgiving-2022-11">been fired</a> or <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/the-sad-story-behind-twitter-hashtag-love-where-you-work-2022-11">quit after rejecting</a> Musk's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-twitter-layoffs-hardcore-ultimatum-email-fire-staff-resign-2022-11">"hardcore" ultimatum</a>. The <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-executive-said-working-over-75-hours-week-musk-firings-2022-11">skeleton crew still employed</a> is struggling to keep Twitter's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-breaks-crashes-elon-musk-2022-11">already creaky infrastructure</a> from<a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/08/1062886/heres-how-a-twitter-engineer-says-it-will-break-in-the-coming-weeks/"> breaking</a>. Worse, an <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-lost-half-top-advertisers-elon-musk-takeover-report-2022-11">alarming number of advertisers</a> are leaving Twitter after a<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-11-14/elon-musk-s-twitter-gives-advertisers-another-reason-to-stay-away?sref=Q1XEaVVD"> spike in hate speech </a>and misinformation on the site. Meanwhile, Musk's ad hoc ideas for boosting revenue have <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-new-twitter-blue-probably-different-color-checks-2022-11">already backfired</a> or were previously considered <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-adult-content-sex-twitter-content-moderation/">too risky</a>. And all of these business troubles come after Musk burned Twitter's cash cushion during his acquisition.I've analyzed how companies get into and then out of financial distress for more than 20 years, and I've never seen new management blow up a company as fast as Musk is destroying Twitter.So now the question becomes: How does Musk keep his new purchase afloat? Having observed Musk in action for years there is one troubling option I suspect he may pursue: raid Tesla. But siphoning cash from Tesla, Musk's only profitable company, just as serious competition is toppling its dominance, should concern Tesla's investors. And given his obsession with Twitter, they may well ask: How far will Elon go to save Twitter at Tesla's expense?<h2>How Musk could use Tesla to try and save Twitter</h2>Musk cobbled together his Twitter funding primarily by selling off a major chunk of his stock in Tesla and taking out huge loans. This strategy has left the social-media company with little, if any, cash cushion to fund its recovery. Twitter used the $42 billion collected from the deal to buy back and retire its stock and whatever was left of the $6 billion in cash it reported at the end of June was used to retire the company's $5.29 billion in existing bonds. Tack on the $13 billion in pricey new debt and the roughly $1.29 billion in annual interest costs that Musk's leveraged buyout saddled the company with, and Twitter is running deep in the red as its cash circles the drain.Between paying severance to thousands of fired employees and hiring new ones, plus rising costs for collateral damage Musk is creating, Twitter will likely consume considerable cash for a while as it tries to rebound — all while trying to stop the alarming exodus of vital advertising revenue Musk is fueling. Unfortunately, Musk has burned bridges with the logical parties that could backstop Twitter's growing liquidity pressure. Musk's bankers, for example, are unlikely to be interested in loaning Twitter more cash. They are<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-elon-musk-twitter-deal-means-for-wall-street-banks-financing-2022-10"> already facing losses of more than $500 million</a> on the loans they arranged back in April, after spiking interest rates and Twitter's deteriorating financial prospects under Musk killed the market appeal on the proposed bonds arranged to fund the deal.And with Twitter's LBO <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-10/twitter-loans-get-bid-at-60-cents-as-banks-sound-out-investors?sref=Q1XEaVVD">debt valued at just 50 to 60 cents on the dollar</a>, the investors who contributed cash to help Elon buy Twitter might have already had their equity value wiped out. That's very bad news for Musk's fellow equity owners who, he even admitted, "<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-19/elon-musk-says-he-s-obviously-overpaying-for-twitter?sref=Q1XEaVVD">obviously</a>" paid too much in the first place. They have little recourse since, as they should have expected going in, Musk owns the lion's share of the company and has fired everyone with significant authority to challenge him.Musk, of course, could sell off more of his valuable stake in Tesla to continue funding the company. He did recently sell another $4 billion worth of shares, which he claimed was to<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/10/elon-musk-tells-twitter-staff-he-sold-tesla-stock-to-save-twitter.html"> help save Twitter</a>. This may be true, but this amount also corresponds with the hit I have calculated he likely took with his personal margin loans as Tesla's stock plunged 49% since the company's latest<a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000156459022024064/tsla-def14a_20220804.htm"> proxy filing</a> on March 31. That leaves Musk, who paid $44 billion for the most expensive impulse buy ever, with fewer options to keep Twitter afloat. Given his track record, there's a good chance he'll fall back on Tesla, his richest company.This would repeat an old pattern for Musk. He has previously used his various companies to support new or adjacent ventures, often with little visibility into how the money is flowing. When Tesla was struggling in 2009, <a href="https://qz.com/1361847/elon-musk-considers-financing-tesla-bid-with-spacex">Musk borrowed $20 million</a> from SpaceX to keep the carmaker afloat. SolarCity, the solar-panel company founded by two of Musk's cousins, in which he had a sizable stake, also <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-supports-his-business-empire-with-unusual-financial-moves-1461781962">received significant support</a> from Musk's firms before Tesla finally stepped in to buy the nearly-bankrupt company in 2016, absorbing its <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-solarcity-deal-closes-2016-11">roughly $3 billion in debt</a>. And in 2018, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musks-new-boring-co-faced-questions-over-spacex-financial-ties-11545078371">SpaceX investors raised</a> the alarm <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-investors-concerned-elon-musk-using-money-for-boring-company-2018-12">after funds were used to support</a> Musk's tunnel-transportation venture, The Boring Company. SpaceX was eventually given a 6% stake in the Boring Company in exchange. To this day, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-spacex-boring-company-elon-musk-collaboration-2021-5">Musk's various companies routinely do business</a> with each other. It's all in the family — a family Musk completely controls.As <a href="https://bondangle.substack.com/p/elon-has-freed-twitter-send-the-ravens">I've written before</a>, Musk may try something similar with Twitter. He has already floated the idea of "<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-x-everything-app-twitter-details-2022-10">X, the everything app</a>," which Musk has suggested would combine social media, payments, news, food ordering, and more. He also <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-21/musk-forms-x-holdings-after-hints-at-parent-for-tesla-spacex">created "X Holdings</a>" — a holding company that he used to buy Twitter — which he has suggested could be used to house all of his various companies. So under the guise of synergies between Tesla — particularly the AI technology behind its controversial Autopilot systems — and Musk's vision for this all-encompassing app, he could direct Tesla to "invest" in Twitter to get access to potentially billions of its cash and resources.If this happened, Tesla investors may or may not know how much it supports Twitter. Unlike Tesla's 2016 takeover of SolarCity, which was done with reasonable transparency, Tesla set up its Shanghai operations in 2019 as an unrestricted subsidiary with very limited visibility. Because of this arrangement, Tesla's investors only get a piecemeal snapshot of the China business' contributions to the overall company. Tesla has been able to use this obscurity to mask the fact that its China operations generate most if not all the company's total profits and cash flow while contributing less than 30% of total revenue — implying Tesla's US operations are still largely unprofitable after 18 years.Tesla could create a similar special purpose entity, or SPE, for example, to invest in Twitter, but this time to help shield Twitter's struggling operations and failing financial condition, as well as its drain on the parent company, from investors. After all, tracing Tesla's cash is already tricky. Roughly a third of Tesla's $20 billion in cash (as of September 30) is held overseas, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/06/23/cars/elon-musk-tesla-losses-bankruptcy-threat/index.html">mostly in China</a>, where it stays. Most of the remaining balance can be traced to more than $12 billion raised from selling stock in it since 2020, plus nearly $4.7 billion collected from energy-credit subsidies. Tesla's operations have only begun to generate significant cash over the past year — though much of that, by my estimate, comes from subsidies and creative accounting adjustments like paying salaries and bonuses in stock instead of cash.While siphoning money to support Twitter is a controversial strategy, it wouldn't significantly impair Tesla's financial condition — at least in the short term. At present, Tesla has very little debt and the company recently netted an investment grade credit quality rating from S&amp;P Global. The company's debt-to-EBITDA ratio, an indication of how well cash earnings may support a company's debt, and a key measure of financial stability — is just 0.4x based on my 2022 estimate for $18.7 billion in EBITDA. Musk could direct Tesla to borrow as much as $10 billion to $20 billion, for example, and still only increase that ratio to 0.9x or 1.4x, respectively. That's still well within investment-grade rating limits. Tesla's situation could worsen, of course. But even if Tesla's EBITDA plunged by half after adding as much as $20 billion in debt, the indicated leverage ratio would still be less than 3x , near the high range for investment-grade credit quality but still comfortably manageable.The trouble is, Tesla's future prosperity has become less certain. If Tesla's operations continue to struggle to sustain profits and cash flow because of deteriorating business conditions, as I suspect, its healthy cash cushion could start to shrink just as Elon starts draining cash to save Twitter.<h2>Tesla is facing a tougher road ahead</h2>Elon Musk has been celebrated as the richest man on the planet mostly by making Tesla the most valuable carmaker ever. But this happened despite Musk <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/17/business/spacex-workers-elon-musk.html?action=click&amp;module=RelatedLinks&amp;pgtype=Article">being</a> a<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/technology/elon-musk-twitter-management.html"> famously bad manager</a> and a<a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-11-14/elon-musk-toxic-boss-timeline"> worse boss</a>,<a href="https://bondangle.substack.com/p/dear-elon-theres-nothing-funny-about"> as I</a> and<a href="https://www.motherjones.com/mojo-wire/2022/02/tesla-lawsuit-california-racism/"> many</a><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/15/elon-musk-promises/"> others</a> have<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2019/03/01/tesla-safety-violations-dwarf-big-us-auto-plants-in-aftermath-of-musks-model-3-push/?sh=7cabf5f354ce"> observed</a> for<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/09/tesla-workers-terminated-claim-maternity-sick-leave"> years</a>.What gets lost in the legends of Musk and Tesla is how much he benefited from lots of help and fortuitous timing on his road to success. Tesla was remarkably indulged for the 18 long years it took to finally generate a profit, thanks to billions of dollars in tax breaks and energy-credit subsidies, lax regulatory oversight, an obedient board, favorable lending terms, and an always welcoming stock market. These advantages at home, landmark support for electric-vehicle-market development in Europe and China, and a lack of real competition kept Tesla afloat as it clawed its way to viability.But that good fortune is running dry. Years of starving research and development while <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/16/20695986/tesla-electric-tape-missing-nuts-bolts-production-targets-model-3">cutting corners in manufacturing</a> have left Tesla with a sparse and aging fleet that persistently ranks<a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/tesla-evs-ranked-among-the-worst-in-annual-reliability-survey-by-consumer-reports/ar-AA14aXqc"> near the bottom</a> in quality and reliability. Meanwhile, Tesla's toughest competitors have rolled out scores of new models, and dozens more will come to market before Tesla's next entry — whatever that is. And nothing in its meager and perpetually delayed pipeline, from the quirky Cybertruck to the Semi Truck, seems likely to move the needle sufficiently, if at all, to change its prospects. No wonder Tesla has been losing share in every major market.Tesla's predicament reminds me of BlackBerry, which also was the darling in a new market for years — until it wasn't. BlackBerry failed to sustain investment in new product innovation and ignored burgeoning market trends until its competition surpassed it. BlackBerry never regained its former glory.With no new models, and its last market expansions of its last model, Model Y, starting to lap, I <a href="https://bondangle.substack.com/p/look-away-from-elon-musk-to-gauge">expect</a> Tesla's incremental delivery growth will run its course this year — especially in China, where<a href="https://bondangle.substack.com/p/forget-elons-twitter-spatter-teslas"> I have calculated</a> Tesla still makes most, if not all, of its profits. If so, Tesla's slowing revenue growth and shrinking margins would disappoint investors' expectations for continued explosive growth. Sure enough, Tesla has trailed market expectations so far this year — especially in the<a href="https://bondangle.substack.com/p/tesla-q3-missed-drastically-reduced/comments"> third</a> quarter. Ground zero for disappointing sales has been in China, where Tesla's deliveries have fallen short despite lowering prices and increasing incentives. In a market where Elon used to brag that Tesla would need<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-12/musk-says-tesla-could-eventually-build-other-factories-in-china?sref=Q1XEaVVD"> several plants</a> just to meet local demand, it can't sell the cars it produces from one.Tesla's nearly $600 billion market share is still two to three times the value of its largest competitors combined, despite contributing only 2% to 3% of global sales. With its dominance in EV markets shrinking compared to aggressive competitors already outpacing its dated models, it's clear Tesla has room to fall further.Tesla's diminished prospects have been hard on its stock, already under pressure due to the expectation that Elon would be forced to sell more of his stake to close the Twitter sale and concerns over his divided attention. Tesla's stock is down more than 50% this year — evaporating nearly $700 billion in market-cap value since its peak in late 2021.We'll know soon enough if Tesla's currently healthy financial condition follows the deterioration in its stock. Saving Twitter won't kill Tesla anytime soon, and Twitter might not survive unless it does, but Musk is draining Tesla's capacity to weather what could be its toughest challenges ahead.<hr /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/vicki-bryan">Vicki Bryan</a> is the Founder of Bond Angle, LLC, a bond research firm, and the author of the <a href="https://bondangle.substack.com/">Bond Angle</a> newsletter.

If Twitter collapses, will Tesla be far behind?

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5b7c357de199f35c2e8b4771-1499/ap18038020109829.jpg" border="0" alt="Elon Musk" data-mce-source="John Raoux/AP Images" />John Raoux/AP ImagesTesla CEO Elon Musk.</div></div></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>The debate around Tesla is being defined by extreme bulls to one side and extreme bears to the other.</li><li>A rational middle ground is hard to hold in this two-front battle over <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/stocks/tsla-stock">Tesla's</a> future.</li><li>Tesla moderates can take solace in the probability that the extremists are wrong.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.</a></li></ul> Tesla is about to enter yet another critical moment. The carmaker will report first-quarter earnings next week, and after two consecutive quarters of profits, analysts expect a loss - and they've been guided toward that prediction by CEO Elon Musk himself.Tesla shares have slid 12% year-to-date, and at about $270, they're far, far away from the now-notorious $420 price that Musk proposed to take the company private last year. Tesla also didn't climb above $350 a share this year before it had to cover a convertible bond payout, so the carmaker took care of the bill with over $900 million in precious cash.That just the tip of the troubling iceberg, too. Tesla reported lower-than-expected vehicle sales for Q1 (although 10,000 cars were in transit to owners and weren't counted in the total), disappointing investors who had seen almost 250,000 vehicles delivered in 2018. Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-tesla-is-not-like-theranos-2019-4">Tesla isn't the next Theranos - here are 10 reasons why</a>I won't go on, but the bad news has invigorated Tesla bears - both professional investors such as hedge-fund manager David Einhorn, who has been short Tesla for years, and the ad-hoc "<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/teslaq?lang=en">#TSLAQ</a>" community that congregates on Twitter, widely discussing Tesla's impending bankruptcy. But plenty of bulls have doubled down. Cathie Wood of ARK Invest hasn't backed off on her firm's ambitious (some might say comical) $4,000-per-share target, Loup Ventures' Gene Munster remains thoroughly Tesla-positive, and assorted sell-side analysts have re-affirmed buy ratings and price targets above where Tesla has been trading.<h2>Fantasies to the left of me, fantasies to the right</h2><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5ad53dc4146e71ab488b47ae-1423/tesla model 3-15.jpg" border="0" alt="Tesla Model 3" data-mce-source="Hollis Johnson/Business Insider" />Hollis Johnson/Business InsiderThe Tesla Model 3.</div></div></div>Tesla is holding an investor event to showcase its "full self driving" (FSD) technology next week, and this has added fuel the fires that both sides have been tending. For the bears, it's another case of Musk promising something that Tesla can't deliver - because he's seen the multi-billion investments that the likes of GM's Cruise has raked in from SoftBank and Honda for autonomous vehicles. For the bulls - well, for some of them (chiefly Wood), it's a signal that Tesla will soon morph into a high-margin provider of "<keyword id="34991" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="transportation">transportation</keyword> services" and move away from the capital-intensive, low-margin, hard-t0-disrupt car business (despite Tesla's plan to build another factory in China, presumably to manufacture cars).Each group is furiously blowing its dog whistles. Wood <a href="https://twitter.com/CathieDWood/status/1116286839357353984">tweeted</a> that Tesla's autonomous event would shame Lyft (the idea is that Tesla is going to create a fleet of self-driving, hailable electric cars), while Einhorn told investors that Tesla is again on the "brink" of tanking. In the wilds of #TSLAQ, Musk has been getting pulverized, and of course at <a href="https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/TSLA">Seeking Alpha the negativity just keeps on coming</a>. The whole thing sounds like two opposing armies banging swords and axes against shields before unleashing hell.This is all good for business. Bulls and bears both need to market their views, and in the auto segment, Tesla is the only chance to use a public company to stake out outlandish positions. Everybody else - Ford, GM, FCA, Ferrari - has a relatively transparent enterprise and has spent the past decade doing nothing but making money. But anyone who wants to rationally assess Tesla needs to block out the noise and locate the signal.It isn't hard. Tesla fundamentally makes cars and sells them. The business isn't different from what Henry Ford undertook over 100 years ago. Back then, people loved their Model T's. In 2019, people love their Model 3's (and Model S's and Model X's). This type of business requires a huge amount of money to keep running, at a global scale can bring in tens of billions of revenue each quarter - and throws off decent, if not spectacular margins, (Unless you're Ferrari!).<h2>Tesla has created the electric-car market</h2><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5bd1e12c9e1e1117fe6a04ec-2000/jaguar i-pace-12.jpg" border="0" alt="Jaguar I PACE 12" data-mce-source="Hollis Johnson/Business Insider" />Hollis Johnson/Business InsiderThe Jaguar I-PACE is one of many new EVs coming to market.</div></div></div>Looking at Tesla's business in this context, we see a carmaker that has singlehandedly created an EV market in the US - Tesla's overall share of the 17 million in annual vehicle sales is about 3%, on par with Volkswagen. Tesla sold almost 250,000 vehicles last year and in the fourth quarter moved above $7 billion in revenue. Its net margins, given its pricing mix (roughly $50,000-$150,000), probably average out to something like 10%-15%, although it's too soon to credit Tesla with a number there because it hasn't slowed down long enough to consolidate profits.Tesla's cash position could be better, and its debt load is concerning (although much of it is a legacy from SolarCity, which Tesla acquired in 2016 and whose solar-panel leases it had to absorb). But its massive sales and revenue increases place it well above other niche automaker and give it a level of market credibility that's closing in on the BMWs and Audis.And that, ladies and gentlemen, is it. I'm sorry to have to break this to you. There is no massive, Theranos/Enron-grade fraud at work. Nor is there an impending takeover of the worldwide transportation industry. The extremists are flatly wrong. Short-seller Jim Chanos is wrong, uber-bull Ross Gerber is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. But don't worry, they and their supporters on each side will continue pumping their arguments. The big short sellers have been, at the macro level, wrong for years. But so have the mega-bulls, with their crazy futuristic visions drawn from Silicon Valley examples, such as Apple and the smartphone business or Amazon and its disdain for profits. That hasn't stopped them from endlessly chasing new angles.<h2>It's scary in the middle</h2><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/58efd1a18af578521f8b5762-1200/sales-vs-market-cap.png" border="0" alt="Tesla Detroit sales vs market cap" data-mce-source="Andy Kiersz/Business Insider" />Andy Kiersz/Business InsiderTesla market cap has far outpaced its sales.</div></div></div>I will tell you, however, that's it's lonely in the middle - or scary, as when Odysseus had to navigate between the Scylla and Charybdis. That's where I've been sitting for some time now, and the only people I can find who are sympathetic to my view are in the actual auto industry. And to be honest, I don't think Tesla's current valuation is justified by the growth of its business. But I also think that a real correction is unlikely to happen until the US auto industry slips into a downturn, and that's perhaps a year more away. Tesla might not even be hit that hard because its buyers are more committed than consumers at large - and tend to be more affluent and able to keep on buying even when times are bad.The more serious Tesla naysayers usually cite a deluge of new electric vehicles coming to market from established automakers as a sign that Tesla's advantages could soon go away. But they ignore that Tesla has achieved its market share with essentially no advertising. For big auto to start eating Tesla's lunch, it's going to need to spend billions on top of the billions they've already spent developing electric cars- and in the short term, that might not be worth it. Big auto can take its time, so long as it continues to print money selling SUVs and pickup trucks.Extremist are rarely correct, but they have one thing going for them: there's an insatiable appetite for their views on Tesla. Tesla moderates, meanwhile, are fighting on two fronts. You don't win in such scenarios; you just hang on, at best, until one or both combatants on your flanks run out of ammunition or retreat. They usually do. And when that happens, Tesla will move on and become the company its existing business predicts it will be. The extremists, predictably, will vanish, or switch to a new fantasy. And then they can be wrong all over again.Get the latest Tesla stock price<a href="http://markets.businessinsider.com/stock/TSLA-Quote"> here.</a> <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-boring-company-tunnel-projects-biggest-challenge-2019-4">Elon Musk's biggest challenge won't be Tesla or SpaceX - here's why</a></h3> <div> <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" data-player="jwplayer" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/Z6oFp93t-CEZHWCBG.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><script>function receiveMessage(event){ console.log(event.data.fullscreen); Android.fullscreen(event.data.fullscreen); }window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);</script> </div> </div>

Extreme opinions about Tesla are completely wrong - here's why

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56f064e352bcd01d7b8b79df-2048-1536/rtxl1en (1).jpg" alt="An unidentified Enron maintenance man polishes the company logo in front of the bankrupt energy giant's corporate headquarters in Houston, January 28, 2002. [The White House dug in on Monday for a court battle with Congress over U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney?s refusal to turn over documents detailing any involvement by Enron Corp. and other companies in the development of the administration?s energy policy" data-mce-source="Reuters" data-link="http://pictures.reuters.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&amp;VBID=2C0BXZYB8LUVO&amp;SMLS=1&amp;RW=1440&amp;RH=678&amp;POPUPPN=4&amp;POPUPIID=2C0BF10CMN3M" /><a href="http://pictures.reuters.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&amp;VBID=2C0BXZYB8LUVO&amp;SMLS=1&amp;RW=1440&amp;RH=678&amp;POPUPPN=4&amp;POPUPIID=2C0BF10CMN3M">Reuters</a>Don't get us wrong, Enron was a crazy story - but Valeant is not the same.</div></div></div>Since last October, when short seller Andrew Left wrote a report calling Valeant Pharmaceuticals the "Pharmaceutical Enron," Valeant has been compared to that corporate disaster over and over again.But it's really the wrong comparison. Valeant is more like a completely different epic blow up - WorldCom.Enron created phantom revenue out of nowhere. Valeant's not like that. Valeant has real products and real revenue - the market just doesn't know how much anymore. In that way, and in the way that Valeant grew under a charismatic CEO - in the way that the company has lowered guidance and subsequently dumped that CEO - it's more like WorldCom. It still comes with a stark warning for investors, and if the parallels continue Valeant will be making some drastic moves in order to make the itself attractive to investors who no longer believe in its business model. We got a glimpse of that on Monday, when the appointment of billionaire Bill Ackman, a financial wizard to say the least, to the Valeant board prompted a rally in the company's shares. If Ackman can just find a way out of the hole he's in, shareholders who are buying in now stand to make a bundle. Of course, it didn't work out that way for WorldCom's investors. But we'll get to that in a minute.<h2>Why Left thought it was Enron</h2>It was an October report from Citron Research's Andrew Left that first triggered a crisis at Valeant. He <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/a-short-selling-firm-is-accusing-valeant-of-being-enron-and-it-says-it-has-proof-2015-10">accused the company</a> of being an Enron-like fraud after finding legal documents connecting the company to two pharmacies that - as we found out later - were actually a part of Valeant's secret network of specialty mail-order pharmacies.Since he didn't know that the pharmacies, Philidor and R&amp;O, were a part of Valeant's network, he thought that Valeant suing R&amp;O for unpaid bills was a way for the company to book phantom sales.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56f066a99105844e018b7e8a-671-503/screen shot 2015-10-22 at 12.35.09 pm.png" alt="Andrwe Left, Citron Research" data-mce-source="Bloomberg TV" />Bloomberg TVAndrew Left, Citron Research.</div></div></div>Those pharmacies have since been divorced from Valeant in all the controversy, but that doesn't mean the products they were distributing have no value. Their sales were real sales, albeit not in a way anyone expected, and perhaps not in a way investors would like. So that isn't Enron.<h2>It's in how you grow</h2>We'll tell you what it is more like, though.In how it grew as a company, in the way its CEO captured Wall Street's imagination, and then ire, Valeant is more like WorldCom the massive long distance telecom company that filed for bankruptcy with $107 billion in assets back in 2002.They even share similar debt loads. Valeant is sitting on about $34 billion in debt, WorldCom was sitting <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2002/07/19/news/worldcom_bankruptcy/">on about $41 billion.</a>Valeant CEO Michael Pearson, who is on the way out, grew Valeant by making big acquisitions. <div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_left"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/4b2fa47e0000000000010eae-400-300/bernie-ebbers.jpg" alt="bernie ebbers worldcom TBI" />Bernie Ebbers, former WorldCom CEO.</div></div></div>Bernie Ebbers, WorldCom CEO's who resigned from his post three months before the company went bankrupt, also saw acquisitions as a great way to grow the company. In 15 years it purchased 75 companies, really ramping it up with the 1998 acquisition of MCI, the second largest long distance company in the United States at the time. Valeant has caught a bunch of flack for its low research and development budget. WorldCom started<a href="http://money.cnn.com/2002/07/19/news/worldcom_bankruptcy/"> cutting its spending</a> on telecom equipment and services in 1999.Both Pearson and Ebbers took out personal loans from the company (more than $400 million in Ebbers case). Pearson was <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-dumps-13-million-valeant-shares-2015-11">forced to sell 1.3 million shares of Valeant</a> after Goldman Sachs called them in as collateral for one of his personal loans last year.<h2>And it's in how you shrink</h2>Everything really started crashing down when WorldCom <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2000/11/01/deals/worldcom/">was forced to lower its earnings guidance</a> in late 2000.It also announced that it would split the company into two stocks - one tracking stock for MCI's dying voice business, and the other for its internet business. Under this new structure, MCI stock would pay a dividend, and Ebbers said that this would give shareholders "<a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2001/jun/08/business/fi-7866">compelling investment opportunities</a>." This, people, is some good old financial engineering.The thing is, analysts didn't see the point of buying a stock when they knew the company's revenue would decline, which MCI's revenue was expected to do.That is why Ebbers also said, "Management is not satisfied where we are today...This is not the best day of our life."<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56f0667e910584145c8b7b3b-3215-2411/rtr3q0w4.jpg" alt="Michael Pearson Valeant" data-mce-source="REUTERS/Christinne Muschi" data-mce-caption="J. Michael Pearson, Chairman of the board and Chief Executive Officer of Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc., speaks during their annual general meeting in Laval, Quebec May 20, 2014." />REUTERS/Christinne MuschiJ. Michael Pearson, Chairman of the board and Chief Executive Officer of Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc., speaks during their annual general meeting in Laval, Quebec May 20, 2014.</div></div></div>That's basically what Michael Pearson said <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/valeant-q1-guidance-call-2016-3">on a call last week</a>, when Valeant lowered its guidance for the coming year and said that it would not be able to produce its annual report on time. This is partly because a the company created ad hoc committee to review its accounting practices. The company has until April 29th to produce the numbers before bondholders can call in their debts.WorldCom also created a special committee ("special investigative panel") to review its accounting practices, though it did so after its bankruptcy and after Ebbers was replaced by John Sidgmore, who served as the Vice Chairman of the company's board before.<h2>The old rabbit out of a hat trick</h2>Ultimately, WorldCom copped to failing to account for $3.8 billion in operating expenses. We don't know what will ultimately come out of investigations by Valeant's ad hoc committee, but in the steps it's taking to get through this, it looks like a lot like a company desperate to buck a disturbing trend - and that means it needs to create something investors want to invest in.A little financial engineering might seem like the answer, and it now has a master of that sitting on its board - Ackman, of Pershing Square Management.It was Ackman who helped Valeant create a structure in which it could buy rival Allergan with very little of its own cash, and it was Ackman who profited from Allergan's sale, even when it was sold to another company, and not Valeant - <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-ackman-and-valeant-are-perfect-partners-2014-11">a very smart trick indeed.</a>Earlier this month, Ackman said he wants to sell parts of Valeant's consumer eye care business, Bausch &amp; Lomb, which Valeant purchased for almost $9 billion. Pearson rejected that idea, but he's not the CEO anymore. On Monday he did have to stand next to Ackman and watch the hedge fund manager give a Valeant town hall more color on what a B&amp;L sale would look like.<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-22/ackman-said-to-address-valeant-workers-side-by-side-with-pearson">From Bloomberg:</a>Valeant has said publicly it would look at selling some non-core assets, but won't sell core businesses. What Ackman suggested was potentially selling a minority portion -- perhaps between 10 and 20 percent -- of Bausch &amp; Lomb in an initial public offering, and using the cash to help pay down Valeant's debt. If that option was pursued, Valeant would retain control of Bausch &amp; Lomb and hold onto the remainder of the company.You see people, t<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/valeant-is-bill-ackmans-now-this-is-what-were-about-to-see-2016-3">his is Ackman's show now</a>, and if financial alchemy is what is to come, he's a perfect star.None of this is to say that Valeant is going to go bust, or that anyone at the company will end up facing a 25 year prison sentence like Ebbers. But what it does say is that this isn't even close to over yet. <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/2-in-1-shampoo-conditioner-combination-science-2016-3">Why 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner products don't work </a></h3> <div> <div> <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script> <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="91YjV0MTE6Q-UUNd4hePsmmU5pUlzcwC" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div> <script> if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; } RunFunctions.push(function() { var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', '91YjV0MTE6Q-UUNd4hePsmmU5pUlzcwC',{ autoplay: 'false' }); }); </script> <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div> </div> <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script> </div>

You Searched For "IOA ad hoc panel" and got 11 results

Delhi HC restores mandate of IOA ad hoc panel on plea seeking stay on WFI's functioning

PTI

WFI to challenge High Court order, says Indian wrestlers' participation in upcoming Worlds in danger

PTI

"Something in favour of Vinesh is going to come": WFI vice president on Phogat's disqualification verdict

ANI

India's top lawyer Harish Salve to represent IOA in Vinesh Phogat's CAS hearing

ANI

Vinesh Phogat's silver hopes dashed! CAS dismisses Indian wrestler's plea for silver medal at Paris Olympics 2024

BI India Bureau

"Ma, wrestling has won, I have lost": Vinesh Phogat says goodbye to wrestling in a heartbreaking post

PTI

Florida judge dismisses classified-documents case against Trump, ruling appointment of Jack Smith was unconstitutional

Jacob Shamsian

NGT imposes ₹10 lakh fine on Karnataka government over pollution in Kithiganahalli Lake

PTI

If Twitter collapses, will Tesla be far behind?

Vicki Bryan

Extreme opinions about Tesla are completely wrong - here's why

Matthew DeBord

Everyone is comparing Valeant to the wrong corporate blow up

Linette Lopez