Tesla bounceback after share slump

TESLA shares rose more than 17pc last night after co-founder Elon Musk settled with US authorities over fraud charges and stepped down as chairman.

The electric car maker’s billionaire boss was fined £15m by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and agreed to resign as chairman but stay on as chief executive as part of the deal. Tesla’s shares bounced back from a sharp drop last week which saw more than £3.8bn off its value.

Musk ( pictured left smoking a marijuana was accused by the SEC of ‘false and misleading’ tweets suggesting he could take the company private. The 47-year-old father of six told his 22m Twitter followers in August that he had secured funding to take Tesla into private ownership at a price of $420 per share. As part of the deal, Tesla will appoint an independent chairman, two independent directors, and a board committee to set controls over Musk’s communications.

Ben Kallo, an analyst at investment group Baird, said Musk’s settlement with the SEC is ‘positive for all stakeholders and should allow Tesla to return its focus to producing quality cars’.