2018-09-29 12:39:00 Sat ET
stock market gold oil stock return s&p 500 asset market stabilization asset price fluctuations stocks bonds currencies commodities funds term spreads credit spreads fair value spreads asset investments
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.
2017-03-21 09:37:00 Tuesday ET
Trump and Xi meet in the most important summit on earth this year. Trump has promised to retaliate against China's currency misalignment, steel trade
2018-05-01 11:38:00 Tuesday ET
America and China play the game of chicken over trade and technology, whereas, most market observers and economic media commentators hope the Trump team to
2017-12-09 08:37:00 Saturday ET
Michael Bloomberg, former NYC mayor and media entrepreneur, criticizes that the Trump administration's tax reform is a trillion dollar blunder because i
2018-12-21 11:39:00 Friday ET
The Internet and telecom conglomerate SoftBank Group raises $23 billion in the biggest IPO in Japan. Going public is part of the major corporate move away f
2020-10-13 08:27:00 Tuesday ET
Agile lean enterprises strive to design radical business models to remain competitive in the face of nimble startups and megatrends. Carsten Linz, Gunter
2023-10-14 10:32:00 Saturday ET
Jonathan Baker frames the current debate over antitrust merger review and enforcement in America. Jonathan Baker (2019) The antitrust paradi