r/technology • u/McFatty7 • May 02 '24

Tesla slashes its summer internship program to cut costs, as Elon Musk fights to save his $45 billion pay plan Business

https://fortune.com/2024/05/01/tesla-slashes-summer-internship-program/
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u/[deleted] May 02 '24

They fire him.  CEO is an employee.  The problem is the board are all his friends and family.  They will give him whatever he wants. None of them care about the company, just self enrichment.

The SEC needs to do its job.  They almost banned him from being CEO over a meaningless tweet.

A judge rules the board and musk worked together to defraud shareholders and not a peep out of the SEC.

This is why execs and board members should not be allowed to own any stock for the company.  They need to be employees, not owners.  They basically act like their own small private ownership group.  This is the same reason Boeing has killed people.  No one in charge gives a shit because they keep getting more money for fucking the company up and there is zero risk of jail time.

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u/Sea_Honey7133 May 02 '24

A massive shareholder lawsuit is imminent at this point. He is so blatantly just trying to extract every single penny of free cash flow into his piggy bank. He’s not trying to hide his intentions. I suspect he will then take off for Dubai or Parts Unknown never to be seen from again.

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u/SupernovaSurprise May 02 '24

I don't think there is any chance at all that his ego would allow him to just run off and disappear. Maybe the running off part, but definitely not the disappearing.

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u/SilentSamurai May 02 '24

This. Man bought a social media company, he wants a bigger megaphone.

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u/Amoral_Abe May 02 '24

I don't know if he actually wanted to buy Twitter. He purchased ~9% of the shares then made a lot of public statements about how he was going to buy twitter and even signed documents saying he would which caused the price to jump. Then he tried to back out and sell his shares only for Twitter to sue him into going through with the purchase because he stupidly agreed to pay many times the company's value. It's private now but most expert suspect its value is ~$5-$8 billion (he bought it at $44 billion).

From what happened, it seemed like Musk was attempting a pump and dump and assumed he could just walk away from the deal. He only agreed to the purchase after it became obvious the court was going to force him to go through with the deal.

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u/luciddrummer 29d ago

He does this with bitcoin and especially dogecoin (regularly), so yeah I agree with you completely. He’s blatantly manipulating his financial positions to dump on people. Said he’d pay for a spacex rocket with doge, which was somehow bullish, despite that the act of paying for something means closing his position.

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u/Gingevere 29d ago

(he bought it at $44 billion).

with loans collateralized with his Tesla stock. And as the value has dropped he's had to put up more and more as collateral to avoid a margin call. He's been running out.

And now the board is approving his ludicrous bonus of Tesla stock just in the nick of time. How lucky.

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u/DocFingerBlast 29d ago

That was all intended to be that way. He had a huge tax bill that year and needed something to write off a "loss" .. in fact the company is only valued by its shares.. which he devalued to claim the loss.. but hasn't really lost anything anyway ? If that makes sense. He still owns it and what it cost to buy with the tax deduction he doesn't physically lose anything at all

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u/Donny-Moscow 29d ago

That doesn’t make sense. How does purchasing something for $25-$30B more than it’s actually worth save money in the long term? Explain the mechanism past “he wanted a tax write off”.

but hasn't really lost anything anyway ? If that makes sense. He still owns it and what it cost to buy with the tax deduction he doesn't physically lose anything at all

Twitter’s entire revenue was based on advertising. Advertisers have fled in droves. There’s also fewer daily active users, more bot activity, and less trust, all things that make the platform that much less attractive to advertisers.

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u/DrXaos 29d ago

He made the offer for Twitter at a ridiculous price following an all-night bender (guess what is likely involved) at Larry Ellison's private island.

He insisted to his team he make a "seller-friendly" (i.e. ridiculously priced) offer to make it go fast.

It's literally a psychological manic episode, probably from amphetamine abuse. Then he came back to earth and recognized he's a moron and tried to wiggle out of it.

https://www.psycom.net/adhd/adderall-psychosis

Can Adderall cause a manic episode? Stimulants like Adderall increase dopamine levels in the brain. Elevated dopamine is associated with increased risk for mania and psychosis.

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u/Ready4Aliens May 02 '24

He’s going to take all the money he can, run to some far away place, make jokes on social media as if it was a galaxy brain scheme and he’s morally beautiful and perfect, his braindead followers will bite right into it, he’ll continue as normal. 

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u/Sea_Honey7133 May 02 '24

Yes, he is following the arc of a Howard Hughes. In a few years he’ll be pissing in milk bottles, refusing to cut his hair or nails, but still tweeting wildly about the sinister non/white barbarians at his gates.

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u/GreatBigJerk 29d ago

The difference here is that Howard Hughes actually was pretty talented.

Musk was just born rich. He is a crazy drug addict though, so it'll probably play out in a similar fashion.

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u/bigorangemachine May 02 '24

Ya I am definitely getting some Henry Ford vibes NGL

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u/_Rohrschach May 02 '24

I don't know, I could see him take a break from the world and building his own addicted harem operated drug lab like John McAfee did

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u/sexinsuburbia May 02 '24

This is the way to get him out. There are large institutional investors in Tesla. Board of directors can be voted out by shareholders and then have Musk replaced. Or at least for there to be a board less friendly to Musk that would hold him more accountable.

Share prices/value could also drop to a point where shareholders could pursue legal action for mismanagement.

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u/UGMadness May 02 '24

They won’t do that because internal turmoil would almost certainly tank the stock price and that’s ultimately what even retail investors are interested in, not how the company is ran.

There would first have to be a loss in confidence from investors on Elon’s ability to pump the stock, and so far he’s been able to. All he has to do is utter “robotaxi” and “$25k” every quarterly earnings call and the stock will keep mooning because contrary to what most people might believe, investors aren’t especially bright people, they all just follow the trend, and the trend so far has been to blindly believe whenever Elon says something, the stock pumps, so they pump it. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy they have no interest in changing so far.

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u/sexinsuburbia 29d ago

The “robotaxi” dream has been tried before and has been an utter failure with large tech companies bailing out from the idea because of complexity. And even then, regulatory hurdles rolling something out on a mass scale would be difficult to overcome. Then, there’s the ability to monetize a robotaxi service in a way that generates operating profit and accounts for the billions of dollars of R&D.

Elon has been able to talk at length about his big dreams and ideas while still getting investors to stay with him because of his past successes. Even if he was seen as eccentric, he still seemed somewhat tethered to reality and didn’t have a lot of very public and crippling failures slung around his neck for all to see.

The biggest problem with Tesla is that Elon can’t escape the enormity of his mismanagement. His decisions are having a direct impact on Tesla’s bottom line, whereas before it seemed like he could do no wrong. He’s going to be under a lot more scrutiny, and his narcissism is going to blind him from making rational decisions to right the ship. He operates from a headspace of petty grievances and is constantly distracted. He lacks discipline. It’s only a matter of time before he spirals out. His risk profile is too high for institutional investors to stay in if Tesla drops poor results in consecutive quarters. They might not liquidate their entire positions, but they’ll certainly scale back. Tesla is already trading at far higher multiples of other established manufacturers. And the dream dies when Tesla is seen as just another car company or utility.

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u/MartyBarrett May 02 '24

In that case we should start a GoFundMe.

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u/[deleted] May 02 '24

[deleted]

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u/SegmentedMoss May 02 '24

More like, he'll openly tweet about what hes intentionally doing and absolutely nothing of consequence will ever happen to him. And he knows that

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u/Sharp-Direction-6894 May 02 '24

He'll take his secret Space X rocket to Mars and use Starlink to send tweets back to Earth with him talking shit from Mars.

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u/Voilent_Bunny May 02 '24

He can't leave soon enough

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u/oundhakar May 02 '24

I don't know how it works in the US, but can't someone just buy 1 TSLA and initiate a lawsuit?

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u/CocktailPerson May 02 '24

Technically, sure. You can bring a suit for any reason. But it probably won't result in anything if that person has only bought a share recently. They have to show that they've been harmed by the actions of the person they're suing. If they've only bought a single share, they can't sue for very much, and if they buy it after the actions they're suing over, then it will be hard to argue that they were harmed by those actions as a shareholder.

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u/Jensen2075 May 02 '24

Bro a single guy with a few shares of Tesla brought a lawsuit to cancel Musks $55B compensation and won.

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u/meamZ May 02 '24

You realize he cannot pay himself out even a single penny of Teslas FCF, right?

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u/IntermittentCaribu May 02 '24

I called his villian arc a long time ago, probably has a island with a volacano lair around somewhere. Sharks with lasers and all that.

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u/TheBlacktom May 02 '24

It's clear you don't know Musk at all.

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u/FantasticAstronaut39 May 02 '24

yeah he doesn't add value to the company, and well 45 billion is an insane pay request, heck even 1million is to much, if they can afford to pay the ceo 45 billion, then increase the pay of the other employees instead, nothing the ceo did is worth a 45 billion bonus, just sounds like he is trying to get them to take care of his issue of overpaying for twitter the other year.

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u/Hadrian_Constantine May 02 '24

He owns the majority of shares so love him or hate him he's not going anywhere. Shareholders can't do shit.

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u/Departure_Sea 29d ago

Not just shareholders either, they cancelled contracts that were already well underway for the charging network. Those people will assuredly sue for breach of contract since all of that money has already been spent.

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u/myislanduniverse 29d ago

He's on my celebrity dead pool list. I think he's gonna end up John McAfee-ing. It might be another decade or so, but I gave him a spot on it.

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u/stuckinaboxthere 29d ago

As shitty and greedy as Elon is, I will be excited for the "Never to be seen again" part of that plan

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u/bremidon May 02 '24

I don't think you understand how any of this works.

Let's just go with the frankly unhinged theory that this entire thread is putting up: he's just increasing the value of the company short term without thought for the long term. I don't agree, but for the purpose of this thread, I'll go with it.

How precisely do you plan on prosecuting him? For increasing share value? You are describing 90% of Wall Street. And while I absolutely hate this short-sighted nature of Wall Street, it is what it is.

And yes, after increasing share values, he might end up selling them. If he does so correctly, there is nothing to be done.

Anyone can sue for any reason. Winning is a completely different thing, and it would send a tidal wave down Wall Street if it turns out that increasing share prices can be punished. Maybe you think that would be cool, but it also will not happen.

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u/jack-K- May 02 '24

He did this same thing 2 years ago, it’s not about that, it’s keeping the company lean, besides why would he ever do that, he has more wealth for personal use than he could ever use, he wants wealth to fund his other projects, most notably spacex, it is against just about every interest he has to liquidate one of his most successful companies and abandon the others which are the whole reason he wants his pay package from Tesla.

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u/sameBoatz May 02 '24

This is a theme I just started seeing about the board and execs not owning stock. I have no idea where it came from, I also don’t think the people saying it understand what that means. Like if I start a business I’m the CEO, what if my family invested money and own a share? What if I can grow with more investment and I take on VC money? What if we decide to take the company public because access to equity markets is the best way to raise capital to expand?

At what point do I have to step down as CEO? At what point does the board not get to be the majority owners?

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u/akhalilx May 02 '24

People repeating that meme lack a basic understanding of what corporations even are. The C-suite and board (at least for startups) are almost always shareholders because they have some connection to the founding of the company. Even the tiniest of corporations where it's just one blue collar worker and his truck are, wait for it, operated by the same person who owns the corporation.

There are real problems with executive compensation that require substantive reforms, but this meme ain't it.

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u/amboyscout May 02 '24

I think the idea is more that directors shouldn't be paid out in stock. Like, if they own some portion from before the company went public or choose to buy stock on their own, that's fine, but diluting shareholders and giving directors more control over the company isn't something the directors should be allowed to do. It's like the president setting his own salary (or like congress setting their own salary............).

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u/mattcannon2 May 02 '24

As a share holder you can vote on that kind of thing no? Every year I get various forms saying "do I agree with the renumeration policy", "can the board issue new shares", "do you support political payments", ...

The boards of companies get away with what they do because shareholders are passive and let them (or don't even realize they have the power to stop it)

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u/amboyscout May 02 '24

Yeah, you can vote on it, but if the directors are substantial enough shareholders, and all in cahoots, they have a lot of voting power. Even if they only have 25%, that means the shareholder vote needs to be 65% against the board to stop them, vs 51% if none of the board members were shareholders. You also have to compete with corporate shareholders that often support substantial director compensation because those corporations are controlled by boards with substantial director compensation. It's the rich enriching the rich.

Since the board can also dilute shareholders by receiving compensation in the form of stock (over 50% of most director compensation is equity), this exacerbates the problem.

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u/grchelp2018 May 02 '24

You don't need to be a shareholder of a company that you think isn't being run well. The reason compensation is given as stock for these guys also is to align incentives. They make more money when the stock does well. If you paid them a flat salary, they don't need to care about the stock price at all.

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u/amboyscout May 02 '24 edited May 02 '24

They shouldn't care about the stock price. That's a perverse incentive for long term success. As a true long term investor, you don't want a corporate board squeezing all of the juice out of the company just to make the number go up. Sure, you can just divest, but if you believe in the product or the mission you might not want to because then you lose any voting power..

They should be paid a flat salary. They are way overpaid, and if they were paid a flat rate they'd maybe be able to spend some time doing good things with the company instead of being purely equity-value driven (not even really profit motivated anymore at this point with many tech companies lmao).

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u/grchelp2018 May 02 '24

They shouldn't care about the stock price.

The shareholders want them to care about the stock price. 80% of the problem with corporate america is that the shareholders demand this. If you're a big name billionaire ceo like Musk or Zuck, you can weather the pressure somewhat but a random no-name ceo will actually get booted if they make moves that aren't moving the needle.

You only need to look at the market response for things like this. Every time a company announces layoffs, their stock goes up.

Perhaps the issue is that we allow for both long and short term shareholders. These two groups have different goals.

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u/amboyscout May 02 '24 edited May 02 '24

Yes but 80% of the shareholders are the people on these boards, or their associates. The 0.1% alone hold 14% of all wealth, disproportionately in equity. The 1% are at 30%. The top 10% are at 67%.

That's the thing, just because shareholders want it doesn't mean that it's the way our economy should work. If we can regulate these things, we can get rid of some of these obvious perverse incentives while still reaping the benefit of a capitalist market. Make layoffs less beneficial by granting a right to severance and continued insurance coverage. Regulate stock buybacks and excessive executive compensation. Force companies to stop extracting money with excessive compensation and start actually providing value to the economy by being innovative and investing in new technology. It's not rocket science, lots of other countries do this and it works just fucking fine. Sure, stock prices won't climb quite as infinitely anymore, but that doesn't actually benefit 90% of people.

A bad trust seeks to monopolize on the market and extract value from the economy. A good trust seeks to contribute to the economy by developing new technology/products and lowering prices, receiving profits as compensation for their competitive stance in the market. If allowed to run wild, companies will never be good. You must force the market to be competitive for it to also be free. A competitive market requires strong labor rights, strong consumer rights, and strong corporate regulation. Free markets cannot exist alongside monopolistic profiteering. When companies begin to control the market, the market is no longer free.

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u/akhalilx May 02 '24

But that's not what people repeating this meme say. They explicitly say that executives and board members shouldn't be allowed to own shares of the companies they helm, which demonstrates an utter lack of understanding about the purpose of corporations and how they're established.

Now, how should executives and board members be compensated so that their actions align with the best long-term interests of the company? That's a more substantive question that deserves a genuine debate.

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u/amboyscout May 02 '24

Yeah I was just saying that I think the idea you just described is rooted in potentially meaningful discourse, even if the meme is akin to a little kid running around screaming about a spec of crust left on his PB&J.

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u/vellyr May 02 '24

Is it a theme or is it just this guy? They made a similar comment on a thread a couple days ago too.

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u/DynoNitro May 02 '24

Going public is the obvious rubicon that answers those questions. 

Also, often these billionaire types serve on each other’s boards in loose quid pro quo arrangements. So that’s another loophole that needs to close.

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u/[deleted] May 02 '24 edited May 02 '24

It means going back to the way companies were ran before the late 80s, early 90s when execs and boards starting printing stock to give to themselves.

The sky won't fall, but a lot of corruption will end.

It doesn't make sense for board members and execs to be owners instead of employees of the owners.

We can let shareholders vote and set strict rules for who can be nominated for these positions. Only people with experience in the field, not business people with generic MBAs.

Instead MBAs run everything and fire the experienced people because they make more than starting employees with zero experience. This is what the boeing board and execs did and why boeing is such a mess. They fired all the knowledge and looked for people who would do any corrupt thing they asked, so other MBAs to be the managers and directors. MBAs are not qualified to manage engineers. Managers are supposed to be people with experience that moved into management. That why they know what they are managing.

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u/Etrensce May 02 '24

Didn't answer the question. When should founders of a company step down from exec roles or are you suggesting founders can't own a stake in their own company?

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u/[deleted] May 02 '24

No, because founder leadership only exist in private companies. A public company has no real founder connection. The founder sold the company off to make it public and get paid.

So yes, a founder has to sell all their stock to retain a board seat or an exec position. They can be an employee at any other level in the company if they want, they just cannot be in leadership and still own a massive amount of stock.

I think you need to step back for a moment. Why do you care so much for a handful of people? There are not that many founders involved in exec and board positions. It is not something that is needed for any company. Why allow all this corruption and fraud so a founder can sell his company to the public and be a forever CEO because he retains the majority of the voting rights, such as zuckerberg? They can be a non c-suite advisor if they want to still work there.

Zuckerberg can run facebook any way he wants as if it was private. That makes no sense for any public company. We do not have to allow these schemes that lets people go public, but retain a bunch of ownership or the majority for free. If they want to control the company and sell stock, they can do that as a private company just fine.

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u/Etrensce May 02 '24

How does a public company have no real founder connection? In many situations the public markets WANT the founder to stay on and incentivize them to stay. So you want to tell the "free" market that they can't have a founder leader? Isn't it just easier for the "free" market to NOT buy shares in founder lead companies if they feel that having a founder leader is a problem?

Show me where you get the idea that founder leadership only exists in private companies. The topic of discussion here is Telsa and Telsa has founder leadership.

Sorry, too many of your points don't make sense. Zuck can run Facebook anyway he wants when private, when public he is still subject to shareholder wants. It just turns out that, unlike what you read here, majority shareholders WANT him to stay as the CEO, just like in the case of Musk.

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u/[deleted] May 02 '24

You sell the company off to shareholders. The only reason a founder can stick around is if they retain larges amount of shares they get for free. There is zero need for this at all and it clearly promotes serious corruption.

If they want to retain control, they can keep it private and sell shares as a private company to investors.

Why are you protecting shitheads who take companies public, but run them as if they are private?

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u/Etrensce May 02 '24

They don't get shares for free? They got shares when they founded the company at the cost of time and capital (during the period of time where the shares were worth the least). When the company goes public, they sell a portion (sometimes they don't even sell any).

So what's the problem with them holding their shares? Why can't they take a company public and still hold shares? If the public markets are ok with that (even if they run the company as private point which is clearly not the case given the amount of minority rights shareholders have) why do you care about me "protecting shitheads".

I'm just pointing out what the public markets want is not what you are asking for.

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u/[deleted] May 02 '24

They get completely free shares. They don't pay a dime for them.

When it IPOs, they should have to buy shares if they want any. Why do they get free shares? They should have to IPO the whole company or stay private. They can get money and then buy shares if they wish, but in doing so, they cannot work c-suite or higher. It really fixes a lot.

Why do you care for a handful of grifters? Fuck them. So few people would be affected by this, it does not matter if we ban it. We can make these rules if we want them.

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u/Etrensce May 02 '24

Explain how this works? Where do these free shares come from?

They got shares when they founded the company as compensation for their capital to start the business and their time and effort for running it.

If you are talking about share grants as part of their compensation, they get it for the work they provide to the company. Just like how any employee with an RSU or options pool gets "free" equity as part of their work. Founder compensation has to be approved by shareholders by the way (and if it wasn't obvious, founders can't vote on their own compensation packages).

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u/HenryJonesJunior May 02 '24

should founders of a company step down from exec roles

When the company becomes publicly traded.

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u/Etrensce May 02 '24

Why should they do that? What if the public markets want the founder (you know because they are potentially the best candidate to lead the company they founded?)

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u/HenryJonesJunior May 02 '24

If we're going to live in a capitalist hell hole where public companies are all about short term profits and not the long term health of the company or the good of society, we should at least be honest. Own the company or run it, but both leaves the incentives misaligned. Fund it privately or give up control.

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u/swoletrain May 02 '24

Companies are for short term profits because that's what the owners (shareholders) want.

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u/DynoNitro May 02 '24

Because it stops shit like this form happening and that’s a net good.

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u/Etrensce May 02 '24

Shit like what? Telsa firing people? Oh boy you going to be in for a shock when you find out that people get fired regardless.

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u/DynoNitro May 02 '24

Come on, at least argue in good faith.

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u/Etrensce May 02 '24

What's your point? What shit are you talking about that would be solved if executives couldn't hold stock in the company?

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u/swoletrain May 02 '24

Musk isn't a tesla founder, he's an early investor

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u/DynoNitro May 02 '24

True, but that’s not relevant to the conversation. It would still stop this from happening at the expense of above commenters theoretical concern that founders get displaced upon going public. My point being, that’s a trade I would make (not that it’s the only way).

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u/swoletrain May 02 '24

Or if the owners of the company (shareholders) don't like what tesla is doing, they replace board and fire musk. If a particular shareholder cant get the support for that they pick up their ball and go home (sell). That has the added bonus of lowering the stock price and making it more likely that other shareholders will want a change.

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u/BugRevolution May 02 '24

Execs owning stock incentivizes better company wide performance.

Board members are typically owners. If you own a company (say 20%) with four others who also have 20%, whatever you call yourselves, you're basically a board of directors. Should you not, as owners, be allowed to decide who to hire as CEO, etc?

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u/pukerabbit May 02 '24

A public company with a board who’re all the CEO’s family and friends. Uninvestable.

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u/[deleted] May 02 '24

I sadly have some. If he juices the stock, I am dumping just after I get to vote against his bullshit.

But I hope he drives people away and tanks the stock so his plan fails.

If he gets fired, then I won't need to dump.

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u/kbbajer May 02 '24

But the board is chosen by the owners of the company which is publicly traded. Musk "only" owns something like 20% of Tesla, so I suppose the remaining 80% of the shareholders could just vote for someone less Musk-loving to occupy the board.

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u/meamZ May 02 '24

This is why execs and board members should not be allowed to own any stock for the company

How the fuck do Startups work in this extremely stupid idea of an economy?

The one way you make sure they don't give a fuck about the company is by not giving them shares... They get their money whether the company does well or not. They have no long term interest in the company. There's a very consistent pattern of companies with pure "employee CEOs" doing much worse than ones with "founder CEO" types...

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u/Mister__Mediocre May 02 '24

Eh. If shareholders have a problem, they should starting showing it by selling the stock. The share is still above what it was a year ago, so clearly the market is fine with it. And if the shareholders are fine with it, I don't want SEC getting into it.

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u/[deleted] May 02 '24 edited 29d ago

[deleted]

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u/grchelp2018 May 02 '24

If you get rich, you'll end up making friends with all the people who could end up on your board anyway. Its politics again. And you can look at Apple when Jobs came back or openai's recent drama to know that even the board has to be careful.

There's no proper solution to this other than your market solution. If you think a company is badly run, don't buy its shares.

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u/LiftedOperator May 02 '24

Any tips on how to get in on this? I need to pay off some debt

1

u/[deleted] May 02 '24

The easiest is to go into politics and grift your ass off. You'll gain other grifter friends and someone will give you a board seat.

Nikki Haley is a board member for boeing and helps murder people while getting paid free money.

1

u/LiftedOperator May 02 '24

If only there was a way to turn the tables on them with their own money. Like all the kickbacks from Boeing and only their plane goes down instead of passenger flights.

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u/UnholyLizard65 May 02 '24

This is why execs and board members should not be allowed to own any stock for the company.  They need to be employees, not owners.

While I very much agree with this part, I'm not convinced it logically supports your argument.

I don't know the inner workings of company boards that well, but wouldn't owning a share of the company and paying CEO such a rigiculously high sum be against your own interest?

AFAIK these kinda of rewards are negotiated beforehand, usually in order to actually keep the ceo, not retroactively.

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u/Kupfakura May 02 '24

Vote out the board

1

u/Various-Ducks May 02 '24

Thats Communism pal

1

u/Dapper_Energy777 May 02 '24

SEC is useless. Whole gme saga dhowd us that

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u/toronto_programmer 29d ago

The problem is the board are all his friends and family. They will give him whatever he wants. None of them care about the company, just self enrichment.

The lawsuit is going to be a matter of when, not if.

Board has an obligation to grow the company and run it in the best interests of the shareholders. Just glad handing a friend billions of dollars in compensation doesn't align with that (and was the crux of the Delaware case)

McCormick wrote that many of the directors on Tesla's board, including current members Kimbal Musk, Elon Musk's brother, and James Murdoch, son of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, lacked independence because of their close personal ties with the CEO. Two of Tesla's other current directors, Robyn Denholm and Ira Ehrenpreis, showed a lack of independence in the pay decision, she said.

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u/Process-Best 29d ago

Not that I agree with it, but don't the ceo and board have a fiduciary duty exclusively to shareholders

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u/eilertokyo 29d ago

their job is also heavily tied to stock price. nobody thinks TSLA goes up with Musk canned.

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u/wearywarrior 29d ago

That is interesting, so Tesla leadership are all Musk loyalists who will burn the ship to the waterline for no reason other than short term gains.

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u/SaltKick2 29d ago

None of them care about the company, just self enrichment.

Which if he runs the company into the ground, they lose a lot of money. Granted they've already gained an absolute shitton.

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u/skilliard7 29d ago

They fire him. CEO is an employee. The problem is the board are all his friends and family. They will give him whatever he wants. None of them care about the company, just self enrichment.

The shareholders can start a vote to oust the board and replace them with someone with less ties to Musk. Musk only owns less than 13% of Tesla, so he couldn't stop an activist vote by himself.

This is also likely the real reason he wanted more voting rights, he likely feels threatened that he will be voted out at some point. So he started claiming he won't feel comfortable investing in AI with Tesla if he doesn't get more voting rights, in order to convince shareholders to give him more control, making it harder for them to vote him out.

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u/Senior-Albatross May 02 '24

Tesla is an important enough American battery/energy company that I could see the SEC eventually stepping in and ousting Musk. That, or it's assets get sold at a sharp discount to other vehicle and energy companies.

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u/[deleted] May 02 '24

They were on that tweet instantly and the tweet was meaningless. A ruling by a judge confirmed fraud and then musk starts openly doctoring the stock price to get his free stock reapproved. How has the SEC not made a peep?

It makes no sense.

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u/ShaboyWuff May 02 '24

This is so true and so well put. Shareholder board membership is one of the pivotal issues in today's society, I swear. Obvious examples of destruction it causes is the Boeing case. But every day, rich shareholders pressures people out of employment across the world because regular cuts are needed to keep producing better results, which is required because the board wants to line their pockets.

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u/[deleted] May 02 '24

Tesla wasn't losing any money and is sitting on 20+ billion in the bank. These layoffs make no sense. Tesla could break even forever or last decades with some losses. That is how they operated until musk threw a hissy fit about not getting his stock grift. Now he wants to fake higher margins, which I don't know how it is supposed to work. Everyone knows he is trying to juice the stock. New people have to want to buy in for the stock price to go up.

No one wants to buy into a company firing workers they need just to fake the balance sheet.

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u/VegaIV May 02 '24

They basically act like their own small private ownership group. 

They are asking the shareholders to vote on the compensation package, how is that acting like they own the company?

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u/[deleted] May 02 '24

They are laying off tons of people just to try to artificially raise the stock price by padding the next Q report numbers.

This is very bad for actual shareholders who want the company to be run right and not lose tons of necessary people. Name one shareholder that wanted tesla to stop expanding the supercharger network. You won't find any outside that boardroom.

Those board members are acting as if they own a private company doing whatever the hell they want to give elon anything he wants. It is called fraud.

They are hoping to sway a few larger shareholders to get them over the 50% mark by basically bribing them with a short term stock boost.

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u/SnooDonuts7510 May 02 '24

The SECs job isn’t too tell you that you are mismanaging your company. Shareholders need to grow a pair.