Tesla’s Chairwoman of the Board, Robyn Denholm, says that voting for Elon Musk’s compensation bundle of as much as $1 trillion is basically voting for Tesla’s future.
She insists solely Elon Musk could make this future come true with out ever explaining why.
Tesla’s board is just about at all times silent. They hardly ever, if ever, remark about something until it’s time to get Elon Musk paid.
Then, they, particularly chairwoman Robyn Denholm, come out of their cave to promote to shareholders that Elon Musk, the wealthiest man on the planet and already the most important Tesla shareholder, ought to obtain the most important compensation bundle ever – beating the subsequent greatest by an element of 10.
They just lately gave Musk a $29 billion bundle with out acquiring shareholder approval, and now they’re proposing a brand new one which might be price round $1 trillion in inventory choices for Musk if all of the milestones are met.
Denholm, who hardly ever, if ever, offers interviews, is now making the rounds to attempt to promote the bundle to shareholders.
Tesla’s board is even shopping for Google adverts to promote the bundle for shareholders, regardless of the automaker hardly ever utilizing promoting to promote its personal merchandise.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Denholm claimed that Musk is the one one who can execute Tesla’s mission, they usually imagine that despite the fact that he’s the only one that advantages essentially the most from Tesla’s inventory proper now, he nonetheless must be motivated with extra inventory choices:
AI and autonomous is on the entrance and heart of that, each within the automobiles but additionally in our Optimus lineup and what we’re doing from a robotics perspective as properly. And so, having the Board’s accountability is to take a look at who the CEO is for the subsequent time frame, and we imagine that Elon is the fitting CEO for Tesla over this transformative time frame. And our view is he’s a generational chief – there aren’t every other folks on the market like Elon who can really lead the Firm over this subsequent decade or so. And so, when you resolve who the chief ought to be, you’ll want to put in place the compensation bundle to incent and inspire him to truly ship towards the bold objectives.
When requested about Musk’s political actions, Denhom mainly mentioned that it’s not the board’s enterprise they usually solely choose him on the corporate’s efficiency:
Yeah, I imply, what he does from a private perspective by way of his political motivations, et cetera, is as much as him. Clearly, from our perspective as a Board, we’re measuring him on outcomes and measuring him on what he does because the CEO of Tesla. Our view is he’s delivered large time prior to now, and we stay up for him doing that within the subsequent period.
Nonetheless, she didn’t clarify what he has delivered these days.
Tesla’s car gross sales have been in decline for 2 years now. Earnings have been dropping for 3 years. Tesla’s autonomous driving effort is years behind the place Musk claimed it could be since 2018.
The one factor that’s up is Tesla’s inventory, and it seems to be up on folks believing what Musk is claiming, regardless of an extended historical past of being persistently mistaken.
But, Denhom insists that voting for Musk’s compensation bundle is a vote on Tesla’s future:
I believe the actually key factor is that shareholders get to vote on the way forward for the Firm, not simply on a compensation bundle. The compensation bundle is the instantiation of the objectives and ambition – the tremendous bold objectives that now we have as an organization. So, I believe with this proposal, it’s actually as much as shareholders what the way forward for Tesla appears to be like like.
Tesla shareholders will vote on November 6 on the annual shareholders assembly.
Electrek’s Take
The board has been promoting a whole lot of thousands and thousands of {dollars}’ price of Tesla inventory during the last 12 months.
They wish to give Elon Musk ridiculous compensation as a result of he additionally allowed them to offer themselves extreme compensation, to the purpose the place they needed to settle with shareholders and return nearly $1 billion price of extreme board compensation. It’s pathetic.
It’s all about greed. It’s now not concerning the mission.
Neglect concerning the clear undeniable fact that Tesla’s CEO is shedding his thoughts and utilizing his platform to stoke political violence nearly as a full-time job for the final 2 weeks, the compensation additionally doesn’t make sense on a purely wise foundation.
Musk is being grasping in comparison with the common human, however he’s additionally being grasping on a billionaire scale.
As compared, Jeff Bezos by no means took inventory choices throughout his tenure as CEO of Amazon as a result of he was already totally motivated to carry out on the firm, as he stood to learn essentially the most from the inventory:
Musk is in the identical scenario, however he apparently wants one other trillion-dollar price of inventory to be motivated.
If the issue is the management of the corporate by his stake, which is clearly nonsense as he has full management over Tesla with simply 15% of the share, Tesla may do the identical as Ellison with Oracle:
Ellison managed to extend his possession of Oracle by share buybacks that helped shareholders as a substitute of diluting the inventory like Musk’s compensation bundle.
In brief, there are quite a few methods to attain what Musk claims to perform whereas benefiting all shareholders equally, and him extra proportionally as the most important shareholder, however he selected to push for the choice that ends in him getting a disproportional profit.
That’s referred to as greed. Pure and easy.
