Is Elon Musk Still in Charge at Tesla? He Says He May Not Be

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 11, 3:40PM EST · Published Oct 30, 6:40AM EDT

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Is Elon Musk Still in Charge at Tesla? He Says He May Not Be — © courtesy of Tesla Inc.

Elon Musk is the founder, board chair and chief executive officer of Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA). Part of a U.S. Securities and Exchange (SEC) settlement for Musk’s tweets about a potential plan to take Tesla private cost him his chairman’s job. Musk went on Twitter again to ask whether he has any role at Tesla at all.

[in-text-ad]

In the first of two tweets, Musk said he would be able to keep one of the three jobs that companies traditionally have as their traditional management positions:

https://twitter.com/ElonMus81328425/status/1057155462964150272

[nativounit]

The “confuse the authorities” statement is cryptic and may simply be a jab at the SEC because of the $20 million fine he had to pay as part of the settlement over his taking Tesla private tweets.

However, he followed up with a second tweet that questioned his future role at Tesla more specifically:

https://twitter.com/ElonMus81328425/status/1057155418873573376

Musk is joking, almost certainly. But tweets have hurt him badly before. He has been willing to ignore that since the SEC fine and the judgment that took away his board chair role. He continues to risk further sanctions that could prevent him from running Tesla or serving on its board. The SEC’s first offer to Musk in the “go private” tweet case was to bar him from the Tesla board.

One of the troubles that have emerged from Musk’s tweeting habit is that observers have found they cannot distinguish fact from fiction. Many outsiders believe that has hurt Tesla’s stock price as investors try to probe the company for information about how Tesla is doing.

In a tweet not long before the two on his role at Tesla, he said:

Presumably, that tweet was accurate. As for Musk’s role at Tesla, that hinges partly on what he tweets and how the government sees it.

[recirclink id=501776]

[wallst_email_signup]

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.