> First, Musk did acquire 9.1% of the company secretly, in the open market, paying prices in the high $30s to get a start on his takeover without paying a control premium. Crucially, he seems to have done some of this acquiring illegally: He was required by law to disclose his ownership stake, and probably his intention to take over the company, by March 24, but he waited until April 4 to make that disclosure, and claimed to be a passive investor when he finally did. This delay allowed him to buy an extra 13 million shares at lower prices, saving him (and costing shareholders) on the order of $140 million.
> The consensus seems to be that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission can’t do much about this, and while there is a shareholder lawsuit about it already, it’s not clear that that will accomplish much either. Sometimes companies will ask courts to “sterilize” an acquirer’s shares, preventing him from voting them, if he acquired them in violation of the disclosure rules, but those requests don’t have much success. Basically Musk seems to have broken the law to buy his shares, but no one can do much about it.
This just absolutely short-circuits my mind. How is it possible to say "Yeah, he robbed the bank in broad daylight, but there's nothing we can do about it."
