Management Essay: Elon Musk's tweet; Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured

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Elon Musk's tweet; Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured
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Tesla Inc.
Elon Musk's tweet; Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.
Background to Tesla and its pre-existing governance structures;
Tesla Inc., formerly called Tesla Motors Inc., is an American company dealing in electric cars and clean energy. Its headquarters are in Palo Alto in California. Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded the company, which was incorporated on July 1, 2003. The recalled EV1 electric cars that General Motors produced inspired them. General Motors later destroyed the EV1 after recalling them.  AC Propulsion tzero inspired the founding of Tesla too. It is a company that made electric vehicles but in a limited number in the US in the 2000s. Other initial shareholders include Ian Wright and Elon Musk (Hoffman, 2015). In their Series A contributions, they raised a total of $7.5 million. Out of the total, Musk contributed $6.5 million, making him the main shareholder. Jeffrey Brian Straubel joined later in May 2004, making him the fifth shareholder. The considerable contribution that Musk voted him the Chairperson of the board while Eberhard became the CEO. In 2009, Eberhard went to court to seek a court order that declares the five shareholders as co-founders instead of the initial position that Olen Musk was the sole founder (LaMonica, 2020). The court granted the request. The other member of the board includes Robyn Denholm since 2014, Kimbal Musk since 2004, Ira Ehrenpreis, Antonio J. Gracia, and James Murdoch from 2007. In April 2017, an investor group asked Tesla to add two new independent directors where the company said Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson in 2018
Governance flaws in Tesla
The backbone to the success of every company is in leadership and governance. Good leadership always leads the company into success because decisions are mutually binding (Hanson et al., 2016). The case in Tesla was different. For a long time, the public does not know whether a board of directors exists since the CEO, Elon Musk is the only one in the public limelight. Tesla's face was the CEO, Mr. Musk, as Tesla's brand was tied to only him. Tesla relayed most of the company's information and often spoke without recognizing the rest of the board members' effort. It is possible that he controlled the board because he owns a larger share of slightly above 20percent. His brother Kimball is also among the board members, adding to the possibility of control Musk has on the board.
A company should always be neutral. It means that the company should not prioritize the influence of the shareholders or the investors. In April 2017, one of the investors with Tesla wrote a letter to the board requesting two independent members' appointment to the board. The letter explained that out of the six board members, five had a professional or personal relationship with Musk, and they feared that might jeopardize Tesla in some way (LaMonica, 2020). This demand means that the investors had seen the kind of control Musk had in the business, sidelining the other board members. However, deep within, Musk was overwhelmed by tasks, a...