Bad blow for Elon Musk: A Deleware judge overturned a record compensation package da 56 billion dollars that the board of directors of Tesla had launched to its CEO in 2018. The reason? An exaggerated remuneration, approved "improperly by the board" of the automotive giant and which impoverished the company's shareholders.
“The figure is 250 times higher than the average salary of Elon Musk's colleagues,” reads the text of the sentence. The appeal was presented by a shareholder of the company specialized in the production of electric cars. But let's go in order.
Stop Musk's maxi-compensation: here's what happened
The maxi compensation was expected to be received by the billionaire Tesla shares based on achieving a series of goals over a decade. At the time of approval the value was estimated at 55,8 billion dollars. According to the judge, Musk would have dictated the terms of the plan to the board members, who did not have sufficient autonomy to oppose due to their close relationships with the CEO. Otherwise they would never have given the green light to that "disproportionate" compensation plan also because the founder did not work full time for the car manufacturer, but also managed the aerospace company SpaceX and the Californian start-up Neuralink (which has just implanted its first chip in the human brain) and The Boring Company.
The trial lasted five days and was held without a jury.
Tesla shares plummet
A further bad blow for the shares of the automotive company. After burning 80 billion dollars on the stock market last week, another drop of over 3% arrives for Tesla. Before the sentence, the most talked about billionaire of all time was in possession of 13% of the car company's shares and declared he could increase it to 25%, with an outlay of around 80 billion. Now, the collapse of the share price may give him a hand, perhaps hoped for.
Furthermore, the hypothetical devaluation of the record package would cause Musk's wealth to sink below 155 billion, thus slipping to third place in the billionaires ranking, behind Bertrand and Bezos.
