Democrats Expected to Pass a Bill (Drafted by Elon’s Lawyers) That Threatens Your Retirement Fund

Due to its highly lenient business laws, the state of Delaware has long been home to a majority of American corporations. However, that leniency is apparently not enough for the world’s richest man, whose lawyers have introduced legislation that would rewrite the state’s laws to boldly empower corporations that are already immensely powerful. Critics say the legislation would allow companies to misbehave on a massive scale and leave shareholders with few avenues of retaliation. Worst of all, it appears that the state’s Democrat-controlled legislature is eager to pass the bill.

The legislation in question was drafted by Richards, Layton & Finger (RLF), a law firm that counts Musk as one of its clients. CNBC writes that the bill, should it pass, would “pave the way” for the reinstatement of Musk’s much-coveted $55 billion Tesla compensation package that the billionaire has been preoccupied with for the past several years.

Musk’s huge payout has been the subject of a judicial battle that has been ongoing for over half a decade. A Delaware judge, Kathaleen McCormick, has repeatedly thwarted Musk’s attempts to receive the payout, claiming that the process that led to the approval of the pay package was deeply flawed and that the compensation represents “an unfathomable sum.” As of December, the billionaire was still being denied his pay package.

The new legislation would shift the law in such a way as to make the judge’s current case against Musk’s compensation package potentially moot, CNBC writes. However, the law would do much more than clear a path for the billionaire’s obscene pay package. According to critics, it would also fundamentally rewrite the corporate laws in a state that a majority of America’s companies call home. In so doing, it would fundamentally alter the balance of power between corporate fiduciaries and shareholders—allowing companies to increase corporate secrecy tenfold while also making it nearly impossible for shareholders to file lawsuits against them over corporate misbehavior.

RLF has claimed that its role in the legislation was not done on behalf of a particular client. Of the bill’s ability to rewrite current protections for shareholders, The Lever writes:

The bill would revoke disclosure requirements for shareholder requests for all kinds of company documents, records, and internal communications. All plaintiffs would be entitled to would be minutes from board meetings, which reveal very little. These alterations would make it almost impossible for shareholders to build any viable lawsuits that could even reach the discovery fact-finding stage of a court case.

As such, Musk isn’t the only powerful person pushing for the bill to pass. MAGA has been shilling for a corporate exodus from the state, and many powerful tech figures (including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Trump-fan Bill Ackman) have threatened to pull their companies out of Delaware (as Musk did with Tesla) should the state government not kowtow to corporate interests. Walmart has also threatened to leave the state.

Problematically, much of Delaware’s state budget is supported by corporate fees, and such an exodus could possibly crater one of its largest sources of revenue. As a result, it appears that Delaware’s Democrat-controlled government is ready to support this corporate-led assault on its own legal infrastructure. A local outlet notes that there is a “bipartisan” agreement that a corporate exodus from the state must be stopped.

A letter recently sent by public pension fund groups to the governor of Delaware and the Delaware General Assembly has begged the government not to pass the bill. Those groups, which represent retirement systems for droves of unions and public sector employees, are also aware of how many of those pensions are tied up in corporate investments that would be impacted by the policy change.

“For over a century, the Delaware Courts carefully and fairly maintained balance between protecting the rights of public stockholders, while allowing well-meaning directors and officers to manage the affairs of companies,” the letter reads. “The proposed legislation would destroy that balance, hamstringing the Delaware judiciary in its critical role as a cross-check of fiduciary overreach. This is no accident, as the proposed legislation was drafted by lawyers representing billionaire controlling stockholders who the Delaware Courts found to have breached their fiduciary duties.”

“We understand that the supposed need for these amendments is that controlling stockholders are threatening to leave Delaware because of the complaints of a handful of disgruntled litigants. To be clear, we would not support reincorporation to a jurisdiction with lesser protections for investors, such as Nevada, and we will consider voting against directors who propose such reincorporation in order to diminish the rights of their stockholders.”

“What these companies want is for there to be no possibility for a shareholder or a court to review their conduct,” Mark Richardson, a shareholder attorney, recently told Semafor. “Catering to those extreme views to please a few corporations is a terrible mistake for Delaware that will destroy the franchise in the long run.”