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SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

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Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#281

Post by sokoloff »

buboard wrote: post #108
spectramax wrote: post #3

At this point, the board of directors should just demand deletion of his Twitter account. I admire Elon for his vision, and actually also admire his radical style despite of its unpopular image - I watched the video where he smoked pot on the radio show. It was a really amazing conversation about future of humanity. He just needs to stop tweeting. You may say it’s fixing the symptom, but here if we take Twitter away,…

The rules never apply equally to everyone. Tesla needs elon and elon needs twitter to hype up millions of people so he can achieve his goals. I m not a fan of the guy, but he's got the resolve to make things happen. if you take away his twitter, it will be bad for the future of tesla.

I worry that if you don't take away his Twitter, it will also be bad for the future of Tesla.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#282

Post by elliekelly »

mlindner wrote: post #47
katabatic wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true for every employee of every public company on the planet. We're discussing it here because Mr. Musk thinks the rules don't apply to him.

Sorry that's simply false. You have all your freedoms. You can get fired for exercising them but that doesn't mean you don't have them. If the shareholders wanted to fire Elon Musk they would, but they aren't so the SEC should butt out of the issue.

_Every_ CEO of _every_ publicly traded company has _every_ company-related tweet vetted by a company lawyer. What the SEC is asking of Musk here is simply that he follow the industry-standard.

Let's not forget Musk owes a fiduciary duty to Tesla shareholders and his tweets have repeatedly lost shareholders money and induced people to purchase shares on false/misleading information. That's securities fraud.

Source: Corporate & Securities Attorney. I was once the approver of many such tweets. Though thankfully the people I worked with were exceedingly reasonable in comparison to Musk.

Edit: Missed a word.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#283

Post by elliekelly »

kelnos wrote: post #133
eduah wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not misinformation, guidance was 350 - 500. This is a technicality of not getting approval for a tweet that could be interpreted as saying they are definitely hitting 500k 8 months from now. This is stupid. https://twitter.com/_jameshatfield_/status/11001772987230945...

If he didn't want to be bound by the requirement to have all his tweets go through a legal review, then he shouldn't have agreed to a settlement with the SEC that required him to do so. It's really that simple. Doesn't matter if it's stupid or not; he signed a legally-binding court document agreeing he'd do it.

> If he didn't want to be bound by the requirement to have all his tweets go through a legal review, then he shouldn't have agreed to a settlement with the SEC that required him to do so.

A lot of people don't realize this is industry-standard. Any reasonable CEO wants to make sure they aren't inadvertently committing securities fraud with the send of a tweet.

Tweets being reviewed by the legal department are par for the course at any publicly-traded company.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#284

Post by sokoloff »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #191
ikeboy wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody's claiming the annualized number is a lie. The claim is the original post is wrongly saying 500k total for the year and wasn't run past someone else like Musk promised he would for all Tesla related statements.

> Nobody's claiming the annualized number is a lie. I was talking about whether "Musk meant the annualized number." is true or a lie. > The claim is the original post is wrongly saying 500k total for the year and wasn't run past someone else like Musk promised he would for all Tesla related statements. The agreement was that he would get approval for posts with material information. If he's citing a number everyone a…

> If he's citing a number everyone already knows from the public report, then it's not material information.

The production and sales figures of a car maker are always material information, IMO. Under the facts you posit, they would not be non-public or novel information, but they would still be material information.

Even with that, he was not re-communicating previously issued guidance unchanged. Even with that and even if he were, he still needed to get approval prior to doing it.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#285

Post by zaroth »

gamblor956 wrote: post #101
supernovae wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't even hold our president liable for what he says on twitter.

Trump's twitter statements have actually been used in court to strike down several of his executive actions...

Only in rulings that were later overturned, AFAIK.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#286

Post by MBCook »

hopler wrote: post #196
detaro wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you expect that a top representative of a publicly traded company obeys the law on official company channels. E.g. if your job is to trade on Tesla based on newly announced information, ignoring facts from such a message might very well get you in financial trouble if it turns out you shouldn't have ignored it and your clients loose money because of that.

Channels don't matter. Lying to investors does. Private company CEOs can talk shit as long as all the investors know it's shit

The SEC disagrees.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#287

Post by xkjkls »

tw04 wrote: post #259
astrodust wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it valuable in that you can follow reporters directly, both professional and amateur, and curate your feed very precisely, especially because a large amount of commentary comes across as Tweet-sized asides, not full articles. As a micro-publishing platform, it's hard to beat.

> because a large amount of commentary comes across as Tweet-sized asides, not full articles. There are very few topics that are both worthy of a news story and able to be summarized even remotely well in 140 characters. It is literally the downfall of journalism and in my opinion is a major driver in the complete lack of rational discussion in politics today.

News stories often have little else in them other than their headline. Like, for instance, this one. 90% of the value of this is the headline itself.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#288

Post by xkjkls »

blhack wrote: post #64

My knowledge of how publicly traded companies work is very limited, but: Was what he said really that bad? He said: >Tesla made 0 cars in 2011, but will make around 500k in 2019 And then later corrected himself with: >Meant to say annualized production rate at end of 2019 probably around 500k, ie 10k cars/week. Deliveries for year still estimated to be about 400k. This seems like a pretty simple mistake to have made,…

It's not about the 100K mistake; it's the fact that he signed an agreement with the government that all material information on his Twitter feed should be reviewed by Tesla's general counsel before being posted. This obviously was not, and it is obviously material even if he is reiterating guidance. Elon needs to live by the agreement he signed or face consequences.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#289

Post by xkjkls »

Aeolun wrote: post #159
minimaxir wrote: post #4

SEC filing: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5750664-Show-Cause.h...

Seems to me he was indeed repeating information that was already public.

And even reiterating guidance is a material event. Since the original conference call, Model 3 sales in the United States have fallen off a cliff. If after that event if Elon still believes that they are on track for 500K cars, that is material to their business, and exactly the type of tweet that he signed an agreement for his general counsel to review before hitting send.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#290

Post by jakejarvis »

berberous wrote: post #44
minimaxir wrote: post #4

SEC filing: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5750664-Show-Cause.h...

The last two pages (pp. 11 and 12) are a great example of why you shouldn't be an arrogant dumbass towards the government. The SEC quotes his 60 minutes interview with Leslie Stahl where he says he doesn't respect the SEC. While I think the SEC has a legitimate grievance here, I'm also guessing this is partly vindictive. Play stupid games... And I say all that as a big supporter of Elon generally.

The video of the bolded part is even more unbelievable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRNypdYQoWk&t=69
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