Hvad sker der med Elon Musks Tesla-løn efter 56 milliarder dollars pakke smidt ud? Det er kompliceret - Autoblog

Hvad sker der med Elon Musks Tesla-løn efter 56 milliarder dollars pakke smidt ud? Det er kompliceret – Autoblog

Tidsstempel: 31. januar 2024 5:08
Kildeknude: 3091278

Efter en domstol i Delaware smed ud Elon Musk s 56 milliarder dollars lønpakke tirsdag, den Tesla administrerende direktør og en bestyrelse, der ses som fanget for ham, skal finde en måde at forhandle en erstatningskontrakt på. Det bliver ikke nemt.

Kendelsen ansporer investorer, som i årevis har rejst bekymringer om Teslas bestyrelses uafhængighed. Dette kan være et vendepunkt for Musk, som for nylig sagde, at han var utilpas med at transformere Tesla til en leder af kunstig intelligens, hvis han ikke nåede 25 % kontrol med en ny lønpakke.

“This throws Tesla into a complete sort of tailspin from an executive perspective,” said Tesla shareholder Ross Gerber, who said the court decision essentially required new independent board members who would provide CEO oversight. “Then it gets real messy because Elon — it’s either his way or the highway,” said Gerber, who last year publicly considered a board run as an independent.

Musk har ikke sagt, hvad han vil gøre, selvom en appel er næsten sikker. Tesla-aktien faldt med omkring 1% onsdag.

Først skal Musk give tilbage, hvad han fik, hvis kendelsen står fast. Han har opfyldt 2018-kontraktvilkårene og modtaget 12 trancher af optioner til en værdi af omkring $51 milliarder.

Musk var onsdag 184 milliarder dollar værd, ifølge Forbes, og har kompliceret økonomi, herunder lån med aktier som sikkerhed. Offentlige ansøgninger viser ikke, om han har taget nogen lån støttet af mulighederne, sagde lønanalysefirmaet Equilar. Han har ikke udnyttet mulighederne for at omdanne dem til aktier, så det er måske ikke teknisk svært at opgive sin indtjening.

Deciding what to replace the package with will be a difficult process, since it is unclear who will bargain on Tesla’s side. The judge who threw out the package called it an “unfathomable sum” that was unfair to shareholders and questioned the board’s independence.

Equilar estimated in 2022 that Musk’s package was around six times larger than the combined pay of the 200 highest-paid executives in 2021.

Delaware-dommer Kathaleen McCormick sagde, at mange nuværende bestyrelsesmedlemmer, der er stemplet som uafhængige af Tesla, inklusive James Murdoch, formanden Robyn Denholm og Ira Ehrenpreis, viste en mangel på uafhængighed i lønbeslutningen.

Denholm og Ehrenpreis er i Teslas kompensationskomité sammen med Kathleen Wilson-Thompson, som kom med i bestyrelsen i slutningen af ​​2018, efter at aktionærerne godkendte lønpakken.

“They’re going to have to refresh the board. I mean, he may not like it, but it’s going to be very hard to run this company as it did,” said Charles Elson, director of the University of Delaware’s corporate governance center.

Musk could decide to leave, he added, but in doing so he would torpedo the value of the 13% stake he holds, independent of the pay package. Even before Tesla has announced this year’s annual meeting, several shareholders already are promoting resolutions to give investors more control by moving to annual director elections and eliminating a supermajority voting requirement.

In a court hearing leading up to Tuesday’s ruling, an attorney for the shareholder who brought the case against Musk told the court that there was precedent for Tesla compensating Musk for past performance, but it had to be reasonable and go through the usual processes that the judge found were missing from the 2018 negotiations.

McCormick questioned if any pay for Musk was necessary, given his fortune swelled along with Tesla’s success, given his stake in the company.

“There are many examples of visionaries with large pre-existing equity holdings foregoing compensation entirely: Zuckerberg, Bezos, Gates, and others so familiar to the world that no first names are required,” McCormick wrote.

Musk bringer en stærk rekord i alle forhandlinger.

Teslas aktiemarkedet value was $53 billion when Musk’s package was approved in 2018. It was a money-losing enterprise, struggling to accelerate production of its Model 3 sedan. That was when Musk famously described Tesla as being in “production hell.”

I 2021, nu rentabel, efter at have klaret pandemien og lanceret Model Y small SUV, Tesla’s market value reached $1.2 trillion. That became the world’s second bedst sælgende bil eller SUV sidste år, Bil og Driver estimeret.

Tesla’s valuation has fallen to around $600 billion, but still is more than 10 times what it was when the process began, and the company is still worth more than most auto industry veterans, combined.

Tidsstempel:

Mere fra autoblog