Tesla is going public! Wait. Does this mean they have to start making electric cars that actually work?
This development is good and bad news for local lawyers. Good news for Larry Sonsini — erstwhile Tesla board member and current legal adviser — and his firm, which will be handling the IPO.
Bad news for Jon Sobel, who took the job as top Tesla lawyer just a few months ago (free reg. req.). According to the luxury electric car company’s first public filing, Sobel resigned in December — just three months after he was hired. The fact that Sobel left was first noted by the Daily Journal.
The company doesn’t provide any information on why Sobel, the former Yahoo GC, resigned. But it does provide his salary information.
Sobel would have been paid $300,000 year, but the big deal would have been the option to buy 400,000 shares of Tesla stock at two bucks a pop. Now he won’t get a bite of the public offering. Sobel and Tesla are still ignoring my calls on the thing.
Two questions about Sobel leaving: Is this going to end like it did with Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard? That is, badly and with a lot of litigation (free reg. req.).
And two, does this mean that the most eligible bachelor in the Bay Area legal community, Craig Harding (who was demoted when Sobel was hired), is back in the driver’s seat?
— Zusha Elinson
tesla is also stopping production of it electric car in 2011, so who kill the electric car now
Posted by: Digger Derricks | February 01, 2010 at 08:47 AM