Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk's decision to abruptly abandon a plan to take his electric carmaker private will not resolve his mounting regulatory and legal woes, and may even make them worse, some securities lawyers said.
Explaining his reversal in a late-night blog post on Friday, the billionaire CEO said that taking the company private "would be even more time-consuming and distracting than initially anticipated," and that "most of Tesla's existing shareholders believe we are better off as a public company."
It was on Aug. 7 that Musk first surprised investors with his earlier plan, tweeting that he had "funding secured" for a go-private deal that would have had a value of $72 billion. In a separate tweet, he wrote: "Investor support is confirmed."