Elon Musk Quotes

The good parts about being a public company are increased discipline, increased execution and increased transparency to make sure that you are really building a company for a hundred years.

Being a public company is really terrible for most companies. I'd say Facebook and Google have done a pretty good job of standing up to the incredible quarterly pressure to hit numbers, but most companies - and I've observed a lot now - don't do a very good job of that.

Regarding our links with the Russian government, Severstal is a private company with no government participation. We are answerable to our shareholders.

I hope we’re on the road to more truth-telling to investors.

I hated being a public company CEO.

If we're going to talk about our businesses, we're going to have to talk about them within the constraints of the disclosure rules, without giving guidance, because we're not going to give guidance, because we don't believe that it is a sensible game to play.

It is much more convenient not to be a public company. As a private company you don't have to give information to the public. Secrecy is an important factor of success in the commodity business.

I don't want to take a company public and not have it do extremely well and fail the public shareholder.

It's a special thing to be a public company.

If you're going to run a public company, be absolutely certain of what the parameters are, what the clarity is, that you can explain it to yourselves and explain it externally.

I don't think I'd enjoy running a public company. We haven't needed to go to the market to fund expansion.

What happens to a private company that comes out with a quarterly report and an annual report? It gives transparency. It talks of basic issues of governance and transactions with related parties.

You have more independent eyes scrutinizing the decision-making and financial statements of companies.

I have never seen Jeff Bezos, Marc Benioff, or Reed Hastings complain about being public. Nor have they ever argued that being public prevented them from doing things with a long-term focus.

Being a public company certainly doesn't stop you from taking a really long-term time horizon, but it does make it more difficult.

Some shareholders believe it is all about price and a few people's pockets.

When Facebook went public, they didn't have a particularly strong model of governance.

I would rather be responsible and accountable and help to reward the public shareholders going ahead.

Going public is one step in the life cycle of a company; it's not the last step.

When executives allegedly lie to the investing public about their company's performance and thereby harm the integrity of the market, they must be held accountable.

Whether you stay private or go public, after all is said and done, a CEO's job is to create lasting shareholder value.

We have full disclosure in transparency of our audited, our financial audits. It's on our Web site. It is, I think 16 or 20- something pages, which most public companies or private companies and most ministries don't disclose. So we have always operated with financial integrity and full transparency.

You don't want another Enron? Here's your law: If a company, can't explain, in one sentence, what it does... it's illegal.

Opacity on extreme levels is not addressed anywhere, including Dodd-Frank.

If you're the CEO of a publicly traded company, you're worried about quarterly returns.