It’s shaping up to be a new late-summer tradition: August, for the second year running, has become an interesting month for (TSLA) M&A news. A year ago, the story was Elon Musk’s now-infamous “funding secured” tweet, in which the Tesla CEO (and, at the time, chairman) said he was “considering taking Tesla private at $420.” On Thursday, it was a widely retransmitted report, sourced from a German magazine, suggesting that (VOW3) (VOW.Germany) CEO Herbert Diess was interested in a stake in the company. Tesla stock (ticker: TSLA) was recently up 1% to $223.10, narrowing earlier gains, as the S&P 500 was up 0.2%.