It appears that Elon Musk likes pushing the SEC’s buttons following their settlement, which requires for him to step down as Chairman of Tesla’s board.

In what sounded like a joke, the CEO said that he “removed all his titles” at the company and that he is trying to not “confuse the authorities”, but then he actually removed his titles from the company’s official website.

Earlier this month, a judge approved the settlement of SEC’s complaint against Musk over his “funding secured” comment about his attempt to take Tesla private.

One of the terms of the settlement is that Musk has to resign from his role of chairman by the end of the year.

The CEO has since been poking fun at the SEC in a few tweets taunting the agency.

Yesterday, he tweeted that he has now removed all his “Tesla titles”:

Deleted my Tesla titles last week to see what would happen. I’m now the Nothing of Tesla. Seems fine so far. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 29, 2018

The “Nothing of Tesla” makes it sounds like a joke, but a look at Tesla’s investor relation website shows that they actually updated it to remove any reference to his titles.

The titles of CFO Deepak Ahuja and CTO JB Straubel were apparently also removed in the process.

Musk then proceeded to tweet that he wouldn’t want his title to “confuse the authorities”:

Legally required officers of a corporation are president, treasurer & secretary. Guess I have to keep 1st one or it will confuse the authorities. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 29, 2018

Tesla is expected to soon announce a shareholder vote to elect two new board members and a new chairman, as per the SEC settlement.

Electrek’s Take

I suggested that he at least keep his title of ‘Product Architect’ and he is apparently considering it:

Good point, might put that one back — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 29, 2018

Title or not, I doubt anyone at Tesla is going to have any confusion about who is the boss.

But joke asides, there’s some serious business for Tesla here. We still don’t know who is going to be the next chairman of the company and they need to elect two new board members.

So far, Musk has had somewhat good control over the board – meaning that he was able to get them to back his plans, like the acquisition of SolarCity and the attempt to go private (to a certain degree) for example.

But this new SEC requirement of two new board members and a new chairman represents the first time that the board could get away from Musk in a sense.

As I previously stated when they started floating names for a new chairman, the most important thing is that the new members are all-in on Tesla’s mission.

What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.

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