Hi, In the 1980s, I became aware of debt financed, hostile takeovers: Vulture capitalists corporation would secure a deep-pocket, money loaner They would buy up as much of the stock as possible, jacking up the price Buying the board with loaned money, stock, they would replace them They transferred their borrowed money to company debt Not knowing how to run a company, they sell off the assets as quickly as possible Now this is a thin hypothesis based on: "Tesla short interest is at $14.28 billion with 24.58 million shares, or around 18% of its float, shorted." - https://www.marketwatch.com/story/tesla-shorts-trampled-face-more-than-15-billion-in-paper-losses-2020-01-30 "2020-02-03 11,888,393 (short shares) 47,233,400 (total shares traded) 25.17 (%)" - https://fintel.io/ss/us/tsla Extreme hatred of Elon Musk; SHORT liars about EVs, and; poor competition from traditional manufacturers - too many sources to cite but start with SeekingAlpha, Anton Wahlman, and the EPA "fueleconomy.gov". The SHORTs dilute the 'float' stock by creating, resold, 'borrowed' shares. This has the effect of increasing the illusion of more shares available that in supply-demand, should suppress the shares cost. Then Monday, the dilution effect disappeared as the stock sold at increasing prices. Their normally, artificially created low price did not happen. But who gets to vote the stock? The original 'loaner' of the stock? The new buyer of the 'borrowed' stock? Have two votes, the 'loaner' and 'new buyer' been created from one? Does this compound the 'votes' as the 'new buyer' stock gets 'borrowed' again to create more 'shares' sold by the SHORT. I can see this cloning of shares as being a way to manufacture a voting majority. A false majority as the votes might be as loaned as the the stock was. The reason this comes up is I did not get a proxy statement and voting option last year. Will I get one this year? Bob Wilson
According to Investopedia, the voting rights are transferred to the new owner of the stock. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/05/shortsalevotingrights.asp
The short gets the vote. This is why the Japanese pension fund no longer lends out share for shorting.