> Imagine you have a private company. Somebody comes to you with a big fat acquisition offer and you get excited, but it's obviously not anywhere near inked yet

> Imagine you have a private company. Somebody comes to you with a big fat acquisition offer and you get excited, but it's obviously not anywhere near inked yet. You send a celebratory e-mail to your investors and your option-holding employees that basically boils down to "we gonna get some bling bling!" Then the deal just totally vaporizes. A couple of major points: One, Tesla is not a private company. They are a public company with an actively traded stock. The price of the stock moved significantly based on this information being revealed, and people who were short might have been subjected to margin calls causing them to close out their position, and new longs might have invested in the stock on the assumption that an acquisition at $420 a share would take place. This people have real harm due to Musk's irresponsibility, and they are exactly the kind of people the SEC exists to protect. Two, you say that is probably what happened very confidently here without any evidence. There isn't a single investor that has come forward and said that they were the one planning to facilitate this transaction, which is surprising, because the universe of institutions that can fund a $50 billion buyout is incredibly small. Most likely whatever Musk might have been referring to in his infamous "funding secured" tweet was even less material than you describe. Three, I would also describe this as irresponsible and unethical in a private company as well. If you started telling your employees that their shares are worth $420 a share and will soon be as good as cash, then one of them decides to buy a house on the knowledge that his net worth can take the added mortgage relatively easily, you should feel bad about misleading them. > BTW I am not totally letting him off the hook, just saying that maybe staying away from environments like the public stock markets is a good idea if you don't want a bureaucratic culture. There have been plenty of innovative CEOs who have existed in public companies. I don't think "don't tweet out securities fraud" is really too high a hurdle for someone to meet that it will impede the innovation at their company.