Tesla’s now former chief accounting officer, Dave Morton, quit the company after concluding CEO Elon Musk wasn’t interested in accounting details around a potential take-private transaction, according to people familiar with the matter.
Morton resigned Sept. 4, according to a company filing released on Friday. Morton said in the filing “the level of public attention placed on the company, as well as the pace within the company, have exceeded my expectations.”
Morton joined Tesla on Aug. 6 after Tesla approached him for the chief accounting job. Morton saw an opportunity to work with a visionary such as Musk and make life easier for him by helping with some of the necessary housekeeping, according to people familiar with Morton’s thinking.
The day after he started, Musk tweeted he was considering taking the company private with “funding secured.” Morton, who left his role as Seagate’s CFO to join Tesla, was not flustered by the tweet and met with Musk to go over various details that would make a take-private difficult. He brought up specific details such as equity change of control provisions and potential step-ups in the value of Tesla’s debt associated with a new controlling shareholder.