Mark Cuban Just Defended Elon Musk as He Deals with SEC

According to U.S. regulators, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk has never sought approval for for a single tweet about Tesla.

According to U.S. securities regulators who spoke to a judge this week, Musk’s tweet from February about the company building around 500,000 cars in 2019, was a “blatant violation” of a previous settlement agreement with him.

The government is demanding that Musk be in contempt of a previous fraud settlement.

JPMorgan said on Monday that the CEO’s “ongoing public belligerence” toward the Securities and Exchange Commission could not only weigh on the stock but also ultimately result in his removal as Tesla’s leader.

“The option market is embedding no volatility premium for upcoming legal events in the case of SEC v. Elon Musk,” wrote JPMorgan. “Surprising given these fears previously caused a significant decline in Tesla TSLA, -2.16% shares and a surge in volatility to multiyear highs.”

“The once impenetrable Tesla narrative appears to be eroding,” the note read. “Tesla remains a story of vision, steered, for better or for worse, by Elon Musk.”

Mark Cuban, billionaire investor came to Musk’s defense and tweeted, “The thing is, if @SEC_Enforcement really cared about reducing fraud they would publish bright-line guidelines that any business person could find and understand. Then there would be no excuses. Fraud would be fraud. Instead they create regulations via litigation.”

FT Alphaville’s Jamie Powell remarked, “How about Tesla’s general counsel? Or just about any securities lawyer? Or, you know, he could just read the terms of his own settlement with the SEC?Sure securities regulators aren’t perfect. No one is. But there’s plenty of people out there to help if you’ve got a question about what you can and can’t do as the chief executive of a company.”
Disclaimer: We have no position in Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) and have not been compensated for this article.