Dace Blaskovitz dedicates the second show of May to the date circled on every Delaware budget-watcher's calendar — May 18th, when DFAC finally releases the franchise-revenue numbers Dover has been ducking since March.
Delaware Business Times editor Katie Tabling sets the table. She breaks down former DFAC chair Bob Byrd's op-ed warning lawmakers to leave the 50-year-old Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council alone — a body created by executive order under Governor Pete du Pont in 1977, now suddenly being enshrined into law just weeks after the governor removed member Mike Houghton for questioning flat incorporation numbers. Tabling walks through her own proxy-season reporting: as of April 24, 15 companies have already filed to reincorporate out of Delaware — six to Texas, six to Nevada — and Dell has just announced it's putting reincorporation to a June shareholder vote. She also covers a Small Business Month cover story on how Delaware merchants are absorbing tariff costs a year after "Liberation Day," Governor Meyer's pitch at Select USA, a DelDOT land-easement fight with the Matt Haley Trust over Catch 54 and Papa Grande's in Fenwick, Christiana Care's new $58M Camden hospital campus, and Barclays' freshly closed $800M acquisition of Wilmington-based Best Egg.
Then, corporate governance authority Charles Elson — founding director of UD's Weinberg Center — connects the dots from the 2024 Musk-pay ruling through SB 21 to the present moment. Asked for his May 18th prediction, Elson goes on the record: "flat to a bit down." He argues SB 21 set off a textbook race to the bottom that Texas and Nevada are now winning, dissects Musk's newly valued $158 billion Tesla pay package, calls the Harris/Townsend proposal to raise franchise fees mid-competition "a head-scratcher," weighs in on the American Liberty report flagging a $3 trillion corporate exodus across 50 companies since February 2024, and explains why Dell's Texas move is uniquely damaging given its own Chancery history. His long-term forecast remains unchanged: an eventual AI-driven market disaster will trigger federalization of corporate law — and once that happens, there's no reason left to register in Delaware at all.
