Elon Musk lobbies on X for his $46.5 billion Tesla pay package
Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, offered a personal tour of the electric carmaker’s factory in Austin, Texas, to select shareholders this week.
“Please let us know if you have any questions about voting your Tesla shares!” Musk wrote on X, the social media platform he owns.
It was just one of at least a dozen posts Musk has published on X in recent weeks as Tesla’s shareholders have been voting on a $46.5 billion pay package for him.
The messages on X underline how crucial the pay package is for Musk after a Delaware judge voided it in January. The judge ruled in favor of a dissident shareholder who had sued Tesla, claiming Musk’s compensation was excessive.
Now Tesla is campaigning to get shareholders to reapprove the pay for Musk, who has helped build the company into the most valuable automaker in the world. Tesla has been posting on his behalf, too, and the company’s board has publicly supported Musk’s campaign, saying his performance merits the compensation.
In response to a request for comment, a representative for Tesla’s board referred to a post in which Musk said he didn’t need the money but wanted enough control to ensure that artificial intelligence was handled responsibly. Musk did not respond to a request for comment, and X declined to comment.
Tesla’s shareholders first voted on Musk’s pay package in 2018, approving a plan to grant him an additional 12% stake in the company over a dozen years and making him the highest-paid executive in the country. Tesla was valued at $560.2 billion as of market close Thursday, and Musk controls 20.5% of it, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. (That figure includes shares that have been voided by the Delaware court and that Tesla is seeking to restore. Without those, his stake is about 13%.)
Musk draws no salary from Tesla. To earn the payouts in company stock, he had to complete ambitious growth milestones at the company.
But Kathaleen McCormick, a judge at the Delaware Chancery Court overseeing the dissident shareholder lawsuit, nullified the pay package, ruling that Musk held nearly total sway over Tesla’s board and essentially approved his own compensation without proper fiduciary management. The judge also ordered him to return his excess pay to Tesla.
In April, Tesla asked shareholders to reapprove Musk’s pay package.
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