Quote Originally Posted by raycarey View Post
the SEC didn't want to 'oust' him. by walking away from the deal earlier in the week, he left them no choice but to pursue it.

and let's not lose sight of the fact that he violated the law by making false statements and not notifying the SEC of important company events....imagine if without notice every CEO could say he/she was taking the company private for a higher than market price....and it was all BS.... it would be chaos.
He made a statement that he "may" take Tesla private, "funding is secured". Which was true except there was no signed deal. He was able to put actually 2 different deals on the table within days. One with the Saudis and one with Volkswagen involved. But he did not go through with any of them. Mostly because it was not needed. The big shareholders had reassured him that they are in for the long haul, no matter what the short term share value fluctuations are.



Quote Originally Posted by raycarey View Post
this makes no sense whatsoever.

what they 'had' on him was him saying "funding secured" at "420". what else would they need?

funding was not secured by any stretch of the imagination...but the stock popped and anyone who was short got screwed. i personally don't generally have any sympathy for short sellers, but you can't have people brazenly manipulating markets like this.

he needs to pay his 20 million, step away from the day-to-day of running tesla, and get professional psychiatric help.
He needs to stay on as CEO and steer Tesla into the future.

I agree that he may need to make one step backwards and be less involved in the details. They have restructured the Tesla leadership to enable to do just that.

The basics are that the SEC made unwarranted noises, offering him a "deal" out of court that would have required him to step down as CEO and put Tesla in turmoil, with share prices tumbling, supporting the Tesla short sellers. Elon kicked their ass, telling them what they can do with that offer. This left them with the choice to go home or open a court case. They filed a court case and immediately made a new offer for off court settlement. This time to step down only as chairman of the board, a much less important post than CEO. He even stays on the board, just not as chairman.

Comments in the media are that this is a most unusual step by the SEC. If they had anything against him they would force him to step down as CEO.


Having said that, I agree that he should not have made the funding remark.