Morgan Stanley CEO on Elon Musk: 'Wouldn’t bet against' him

Gorman called Musk one of the 'most interesting entrepreneur[s] of the last 50 years'

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Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman on Thursday spoke favorably about billionaire Elon Musk at the Reuters NEXT conference, describing him as an “extraordinary executive” and saying he “wouldn't bet against” him.

“Elon Musk is an extraordinary executive. Very few people create global businesses that are transformational in industries,” Gorman said. “Many people aspire to. Very few actually pull it off.”

Gorman referenced Musk’s “remarkable” work at Tesla, in addition to mentioning two of the CEO’s other companies, SpaceX and The Boring Company. Musk is also the CEO of Twitter, a position he'd held since late October when he completed his $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform.

“I wouldn’t bet against Elon Musk,” the Morgan Stanley CEO said. “If you’re going to bet against people in this world, there are a lot of people I could give you names to bet against, that wouldn’t be one of them. He’s an innovator. He’s obviously very, very sophisticated financially.”

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Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, attends the opening of the Tesla factory Berlin Brandenburg in Gruenheide, Germany, Tuesday, March 22, 2022. (Patrick Pleul/Pool via AP / AP Newsroom)

Musk is “probably, along with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and one or two others, the most interesting entrepreneur of the last 50 years,” according to Gorman.

Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 22, 2020. (Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg via Getty Images) (Simon Dawson/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)

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“Who would not want to do business with a person who has that kind of capability?” he continued. “I mean, shame on an institution that would walk away from that.”

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Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter came after a lengthy legal battle that involved a Delaware court giving him and the social media company an Oct. 28 deadline to complete the acquisition. Funding for the deal included $33.5 billion in equity financing largely from Musk and $13 billion in debt from banks, FOX Business previously reported.

Major changes have taken place at Twitter since Musk’s takeover, including the laying off of about 50% of its workforce, the verification badge purchasable for $8 per month and the ending of enforcement under its COVID-19 misleading-information policy.