Tesla shareholders to vote whether Elon Musk deserves billions judge struck down

Tesla’s controversial CEO Elon Musk, and his massive wealth, are front and center in a shareholder vote this coming week.

Tesla’s controversial CEO Elon Musk, and his massive wealth, are front and center in a shareholder vote this coming week. Five months ago, a Delaware judge threw out the largest pay package in history, then worth more than $50 billion, that Telsa’s very friendly board had given Musk in 2018. Now, Musk and the board want Tesla shareholders not only to vote again to give him back those stock options, but to relocate Tesla away from the judge’s state entirely. And his board is threatening if they don’t do so, they won’t get the attention they need from Musk to turn around a company facing its greatest trouble in several years. Tesla’s stock price slid by more than half from its peak as a trillion-dollar company in late 2021. Its sales fell short of forecasts and promises. Its profits are squeezed by a global price war for EVs that it started itself. The answer will come Thursday, when Tesla holds its annual shareholders meeting and announces results of shareholder votes on two proposals. One would once again approve the package of 303 million split-adjusted stock options, worth $46.9 billion as of Friday’s closing price. That’s down from the $51 billion those options were worth at the time of the decision. The shareholders approved the package back in 2018, with 73% voting in favor of it. But Delaware Chancery Court Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick in January ruled in favor of shareholders who challenged the package. She wrote that the company’s board “bore the burden of proving that the compensation plan was fair, and they failed to meet their burden.” McCormick said that process the Tesla board used to create the pay package was “deeply flawed” and criticized the board for being to close to the famous CEO to represent the interests of the shareholders.