'Elon Musk PhD' Highlights Opacity of U.K.'s Company Register - Bloomberg

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On May 3, the U.K.’s official business register showed a new company called Elonspace Ltd with a sole director by the name of “Elon Musk Phd.” The entry lists the same birth month and nationality as those belonging to the world’s second-richest man.

There the similarities end. Musk dropped out of his doctorate program after two days and never earned a PhD. The filing on Britain’s Companies House database gives Musk’s country of residence as England, and a correspondence address of a tower block in West London used for student accommodation.

Companies House is a vital hub of information on U.K. businesses, where firms are required to file accounts and name their directors. Although often used as a tool to conduct due diligence on companies, the registry has been under criticism for opaque filings. In 2018 an English businessman became the first person to be successfully prosecuted for submitting deliberately false filings to the database.

“We have a legal duty to place on the register information that is filed by companies and represents what is in their own company registers,” a spokeswoman for Companies House said by email. “At present we have limited powers to verify the accuracy of information that is provided to us. Where there is evidence that false information has been knowingly filed however, we will take action.”

It’s unclear who is behind Elonspace Ltd, which describes itself on Companies House as a business with activities in computer facilities management, information technology, and data processing.

Elonspace Ltd was registered in the U.K. the same week as posts on social media began promoting a cryptocurrency token by that name.

“We can not reveal any classified information about the company, nor the people involved,” a representative for the crypto venture said in response to an emailed request for comment via its website. “This would violate our NDA,” they added, without responding to follow-up questions.

Stavros Modestou, co-founder of the token, said he couldn’t comment on the U.K.-incorporated entity.

“Our token is community driven and we will only reveal more info about the companies and people behind it after we reach our milestones,” he said by email. “We are not going to reveal who is backing our project yet.”

Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer of Tesla Inc., could not be reached for comment on whether or not he has founded a U.K. company registered to an address mainly used for university dormitories. Communications staff at Space Exploration Technologies Corp., owned by Musk, did not respond to requests for comment.

Musk has a separate Companies House entry for a brief directorship of the company Surrey Satellite Technology from 2005 to 2008, which a spokeswoman for that company said was authentic.

— With assistance by Rob Dawson

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