Elon Musk’s settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reduces risk for Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) investors by keeping the electric car company’s visionary leader as its chief executive officer, despite barring him from serving as chairman for the next three years and requiring that he pay a $20 million fine.

Tesla’s stock surged 17.35 percent to $310.70 on Oct. 1 in the first trading day after Musk’s settlement was announced on Saturday, Sept. 29, as investors viewed the resolution as positive news after the SEC sued him on Thursday, Sept. 27, for “false and misleading” tweets about having “funding secured” to take the company private. The SEC initially sought to bar the 47-year-old Musk permanently from serving as an officer of any public company, but Wall Street analysts warned that the fallout for Tesla could have been steep if Musk, a co-founder of the company, was forced out.

Musk’s settlement with the SEC also requires the company to pay a $20 million fine, to provide supervision of Musk’s Twitter account and to add two independent board members. The SEC sued Musk on Friday, Sept. 28, for his series of Aug. 7 tweets about taking the company private in a multi-billion transaction at $420 a share for a “substantial premium” of more than 20 percent above the company’s then-current share price.

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Paul Dykewicz, www.pauldykewicz.com, is an accomplished, award-winning journalist who has written for Dow Jones, the Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, USA Today, the Journal of Commerce,Seeking Alpha, GuruFocus and other publications and websites. Paul is the editor of StockInvestor.com and DividendInvestor.com, a writer for both websites and a columnist. He further is the editorial director of Eagle Financial Publications in Washington, D.C., where he edits monthly investment newsletters, time-sensitive trading alerts, free e-letters and other investment reports. Paul previously served as business editor of Baltimore’s Daily Record newspaper. Paul also is the author of an inspirational book, “Holy Smokes! Golden Guidance from Notre Dame’s Championship Chaplain,” with a foreword by former national championship-winning football coach Lou Holtz.