The biggest hurdle to a SpaceX merger with Tesla isn’t Elon Musk. It’s Tesla’s shareholders

Morgan Chittum here. What do Elon Musk, a $3.5 trillion company and cat herding have in common? Corporate governance experts and portfolio managers tell me they’re a part of what’s next for a potential SpaceX-Tesla merger, which Musk himself backed during the company’s earnings call late Tuesday, saying the deal has “a lot of merit.” SpaceX delivered a blowout quarter and its first profit as a public company earlier this week. But Musk, the CEO of both SpaceX and Tesla, gave Wall Street something else to digest: Independent directors at the companies have formed special committees to explore merging the two. The deal, at Wednesday’s market value, would create a roughly $3.5 trillion behemoth and mark the largest corporate…