Tesla’s founder and outgoing CEO Elon Musk has managed to outmaneuver his long-time foe Securities and Exchange Commission by enabling appointment of Larry Ellison of Oracle and Kathleen Wilson to the board of Tesla. The appointments were made by Tesla to comply with SEC’s regulations that had asked for removal of Musk as CEO and imposed a fine on both the firm and its founder for making comments on Twitter about turning Tesla into a private limited company. During September there had been a mutual agreement to appoint a new Chairman and two independent board members.
Larry Ellison is a close friend of Musk and very similar in nature as he had even defended the latter against online criticism of his behavior on social media that lead to the fallout with SEC. In the past when Musk had been ridiculed in media for smoking pot and other issues Larry had swung to his defense and criticized media for being too harsh. At an Oracle Open World Conference he had declared that Tesla was his second largest investment after Oracle and that the firm holds a lot of promise. He said that media was shortsighted in its criticism as they are just sitting in their comfortable chairs typing out stories while he is speaking from the rocket launch site of Space X and is proud of its achievements.
According to data available Ellison owns 3 million shares of Tesla so industry watchers call the appointment a brilliant way to outmaneuver SEC as he will stand beside Elon Musk and will protect him. Tesla’s spokesperson Dan Ives said that the appointment was a major step forward and stated that now the firm could break out of the storm surrounding the tweets. After the appointment became public the shares of Tesla closed higher by 5.6% though there was no comment from Oracle about the situation.
