Elon Musk: Visionary or Delusional?
He smokes weed during a live interview while sipping on whiskey. He discusses his usage of pharmaceuticals to cope with insomnia —a condition brought about by the fact that he never goes on vacation or has time to relax. He attacks the press, shoots baseless paedophilia charges against an English caver, while simultaneously taking charge of various bizarre business ventures, like the sale of flamethrowers or the launch of a car into space. However, the final nail in the coffin was a tweet in which he stated that he was considering “taking Tesla private at $420”. Although it was an obvious joke, the Securities and Exchange Committee (SEC) in the United States did not find it very funny.
For the last couple of years Elon Musk’s name has been synonymous with geniality with Investors lining up to offer capital only at the mention of his name on a project. However, like Caesar, every great emperor must fall. In the last month Tesla has suffered one of the greatest stock dips in the company’s history.
After approximately 72 hours since the SEC accused Elon Musk of fraud, all the parties involved have already reached an agreement. Elon Musk has been forced to resign as president of Tesla, although he may remain CEO of the company. Along with this, both he and Tesla itself will have to pay a 20 million dollar fine. On August 7th Elon Musk alerted through his Twitter account the possibility of making Tesla a private company again, something which had severe collateral effects on the stock market.
Everything was too much. Forbes described this series of events as "increasingly irregular behaviour", going as far as hosting an intervention in which a colleague-CEO comes to question, even, "the mental state" of Elon Musk. Are we entering an era where everyone's against Musk? Seems so. However, one of the true dangers of these events is not necessarily only to Elon Musk, but also to Tesla itself. As David Whiston, an analyst at Morningstar stated: “Musk is effectively Tesla, and without him Tesla is just a capital-intensive automaker burning cash with too much debt due soon”. Also, analyst Brian Johnson from Barclay’s calculated that Musk’s presence in the business was worth 22$ billion of the company’s total value. So his presence in the company is vital, and of course his forced resignation as president will have dealt some blows to the company’s financial health, but the real question that comes to everyone’s mind is who will save Elon Musk from himself?
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