A Delaware judge rescinded Elon Musk’s $55.8 billion pay plan last month. His next move? Recruit other companies to rage-quit being incorporated in Delaware.
Some followed suit or promised to do so, but a copycat billionaire rebellion against the Fortune 500’s preferred place of incorporation did not exactly materialize.
Lawrence Cunningham, special counsel at Mayer Brown and a director on the boards of Constellation Software and Markel Group, has a prediction for what will happen now: mostly nothing in fact, although a lot of words may fly.
“There will be neither a stampede nor a trickle,” said Cunningham. “There will always be frustrated and delighted customers in Delaware. All of this is both familiar and desirable.”
Why companies like Delaware and will probably stay
Musk launched his protest on X after the ruling, saying the judge in the case, Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick, was an “activist and politician, first and foremost.” Musk now has plans to move Tesla’s incorporation to Texas, and he has already rehomed his implantable brain-chip company, Neuralink, from Delaware to Nevada.