Musk’s Greed Reigned Unchecked at Tesla
WASHINGTON, D.C. – A Delaware judge on Tuesday voided the $56 billion pay package of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, ruling that the company’s board of directors failed to prove that the compensation plan was fair or show much evidence that they had even negotiated with him. Bart Naylor, financial policy advocate for Public Citizen, released the following statement:
“The court found that Musk controlled the board that technically approved his 2018 pay. That’s not genius; it’s greed.
“Musk’s absurd 2018 pay package eviscerated the previous CEO compensation record by orders of magnitude at a time when CEO compensation already insulted any sense of what a senior manager is truly worth. It was the largest potential compensation opportunity ever observed in public markets – 250 times larger than the contemporaneous median peer compensation plan.
“Tesla’s value stems not from the vision of any one person, but the collective effort of engineers, designers, and factory workers. Musk’s mismanagement of social media platform Twitter (now X), along with specific tweets, painfully demonstrates his limitations.”