The SEC sues Elon Musk for his August 2018 tweet that he has secured external finance to convert Tesla into a private company.

Amy Hamilton

2018-09-29 12:39:00 Sat ET

The Securities and Exchange Commission (S.E.C.) sues Elon Musk for his August 2018 tweet that he has secured external finance to convert Tesla into a private company. Federal regulators accuse Musk of misleading stock market investors with false public statements. This regulatory move can potentially oust Musk out of his current chief executive leadership at the electric carmaker Tesla. The S.E.C. files a recent lawsuit in the federal court in New York to accuse Musk of committing fraud by making false public statements that may inadvertently be detrimental to shareholder value.

This lawsuit seeks to bar Musk, who is both the CEO and executive chairman at Tesla, from serving as an executive director of public corporations such as Tesla. This punishment is one of the most serious remedies that the S.E.C. can impose against corporate executive incumbents. From a regulatory viewpoint, Musk might be reckless in not knowing the fact that his public statements can mislead stock market investors who maintain an active interest in Tesla shares. Both in truth and in fact, Musk has never confirmed any key deal terms such as deal price and stock exchange etc with any relevant source of external finance. Tesla shares tumble 12% in direct response to this S.E.C. lawsuit.

The S.E.C. eventually settles this lawsuit with Elon Musk who has to relinquish his chairman role but remains the CEO with complete corporate control at Tesla.

As part of this swift legal settlement, Musk and Tesla have to pay hefty fines of $20 million each. Musk and Tesla neither admit nor deny any egregious mistakes that the S.E.C. alleges in recent times.

Elon Musk ultimately has to abort his previous plan to transform Tesla into a private company. This case sets a landmark precedent for CEOs and executive chairmen who might inadvertently erode shareholder value via their erroneous tweets, public statements, articles, blogs, and posts etc.

S.E.C. regulatory scrutiny and oversight thus serve as a safety valve that prevents CEOs and executive chairmen or chairwomen from social engagement that might result in false public statements.

 


If any of our AYA Analytica financial health memos (FHM), blog posts, ebooks, newsletters, and notifications etc, or any other form of online content curation, involves potential copyright concerns, please feel free to contact us at service@ayafintech.network so that we can remove relevant content in response to any such request within a reasonable time frame.

Blog+More

Our proprietary alpha investment model outperforms most stock market indices from 2017 to 2020.

Andy Yeh Alpha

2020-02-02 10:31:00 Sunday ET

Our proprietary alpha investment model outperforms most stock market indices from 2017 to 2020.

Our proprietary alpha investment model outperforms the major stock market benchmarks such as S&P 500, MSCI, Dow Jones, and Nasdaq. We implement

+See More

Senator Elizabeth Warren proposes breaking up key tech titans such as Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon (FAMGA).

Becky Berkman

2019-03-21 12:33:00 Thursday ET

Senator Elizabeth Warren proposes breaking up key tech titans such as Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon (FAMGA).

Senator Elizabeth Warren proposes breaking up key tech titans such as Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon (FAMGA). These tech titans have become

+See More

Corporate investment management

Charlene Vos

2022-04-15 10:32:00 Friday ET

Corporate investment management

Corporate investment management  This review of corporate investment literature focuses on some recent empirical studies of M&A, capital investm

+See More

Anat Admati and Martin Hellwig raise broad critical issues about bank capital regulation and asset market stabilization.

Charlene Vos

2023-06-07 10:27:00 Wednesday ET

Anat Admati and Martin Hellwig raise broad critical issues about bank capital regulation and asset market stabilization.

Anat Admati and Martin Hellwig raise broad critical issues about bank capital regulation and asset market stabilization. Anat Admati and Martin Hellwig (

+See More

Warren Buffett offloads a few stocks from the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio in November 2018.

Peter Prince

2018-11-27 10:37:00 Tuesday ET

Warren Buffett offloads a few stocks from the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio in November 2018.

Warren Buffett offloads a few stocks from the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio in mid-November 2018. The latest S.E.C. report shows that the Oracle of Omaha sol

+See More

Top 4 U.S. richest people are self-made billionaires: Gates, Buffet, Bloomberg, and Zuckerberg.

Dan Rochefort

2017-08-01 09:40:00 Tuesday ET

Top 4 U.S. richest people are self-made billionaires: Gates, Buffet, Bloomberg, and Zuckerberg.

In American states, all of the Top 4 richest people are self-made billionaires: Bill Gates in Washington, Warren Buffett in Nebraska, Michael Bloomberg in N

+See More