Shareholders, would you vote to reinstate Elon's pay package

[carsly]

Couldn't we just upvote/downvote on X with the number of our share? no?

OK, in my book he held up his end of the deal, so earned what the Board felt was appropriate (and I thought was pretty risky for him). Going back in time to judge with current knowledge is a mistake and unreasonable otherwise Enron shareholders would have been made whole as all employee comp for a decade+ would have been clawed back. Did that happen? how about comp of Merrill Lynch, BofA, GM, bailed our airline employees? Did the Feds claw back a decade of comp at all those companies? It's hypocritical at best and targeted at worst.

I'm not trying to sway anyone either way. We all have shares and are entitled to vote them how each of us feels fit.

BTW, I'd like to have a similar weighted system for Federal and state elected officials as well where votes are weighted by tax dollars paid. Unofficially, it kind of works this way through donations to PAC's and SuperPAC's but let's just do it in the open. If rich folks want to avoid taxes then they will also lose votes. If some pay no taxes, well, I guess they can't vote at all - even for themselves.

 

[anionic1]

Note, this isn’t about giving Elon money. This is about giving Elon back majority control so he feels like he has the power needed to steer the company after he blew all his shares with the mistake of buying Twitter. That’s it. So the question is do the shareholders take the hit for elons Twitter gamble to get him more motivated to get back on the helm of the ship.

 

[Kl777yl]

Vote YES!

We wouldn’t be here on this forum today if he hadn’t been here.

The price is cheap for the vision & innovations he’s brought to us! It’s changed the world!!!!

 

[EvilNuff]

Vote YES!

We wouldn’t be here on this forum today if he hadn’t been here.

The price is cheap for the vision & innovations he’s brought to us! It’s changed the world!!!!

Vote NO!

It is incredibly important that Tesla drop the idiocy that Elon is pushing with robots, AI and FSD and get back to just making incredible EVs.

FSD is already an enormous liability that will eventually blow up in TSLA share holder faces. Better to stop the insanity now than delay further.

 

[HaulingAss]

Anyway, if you want to pay him, do it, if you think he deserves it due to his past performance. However, mandate him to be a full time CEO and gave up all other CEO jobs he has.

As a shareholder, I want him to receive the pay he was primised before he outperformed the expectations of Wall Street analysts, the CEO's of other car companies who said what he was envisioning was impossible, and before all the short-sellers got smacked in the face by Tesla's outsized performance. Not only did he earn it, but I'm a man of my word. When I say I'm going to do something I don't take that lightly. Taking away his pay after the fact is one of the biggest miscarriages of economic justice in modern history. It's up to shareholders to rectify the situation and send a message to the courts not to reverse shareholder votes. Because we own the company. Elon did not vote on his pay package either.

He takes credit for everything but he didn't build Tesla alone. Ton of uncredited heros made Tesla.

This is false and proves you don't know what you are talking about. Elon is ALWAYS quick to praise the hard work of the teams that carry out his vision. I can only think you just made that up out of thin air in a weak attempt to discredit Elon. I've heard him attribute the success of Tesla to his employees hundreds of times. Have you never listened to the many Elon interviews, the "Investor Days" when he credits the teams behind the hard work and parades them on stage, or the 40-some quarterly conference calls since Tesla went public? He is constantly pointing out how hard everyone worked to make it happen.

Talk about trying to create a false narrative!

 

[Crissa]

I voted against every single one of the the board's suggestions.

They should fire Musk. He has become toxic for the company and his tantrums have seriously set back EV adoption.

As a shareholder, I want him to receive the pay he was primised before he outperformed the expectations of Wall Street analysts,

The board lied about the odds of them meeting those goals by omitting details relevant to the vote. It was a promise made out of deception.

We wouldn’t be here on this forum today if he hadn’t been here.

I voted based upon his behavior today.

His behavior last year or ten years ago is irrelevant to my vote today. When someone damages the company, they should go. Just like he laid off the Supercharger team, he should be laid off.

He can come back when he cleans up his act. Maybe as a lower position.

-Crissa

 

[BannedByTMC]

OK, in my book he held up his end of the deal, so earned what the Board felt was appropriate (and I thought was pretty risky for him).

That's the issue at hand and the reason the deal was overturned by the court, the board misrepresented the actual risk.

 

[carsly]

That's the issue at hand and the reason the deal was overturned by the court, the board misrepresented the actual risk.

This gets to a bigger problem endemic in the US which is corporate boards really don't represent the interests of shareholders, as they are ostensibly supposed to do, as many board members are hand-picked by the founders, CEO's or largest investors (at one time). This issue of board composition and fiduciary obligation is much, much bigger than Tesla.

 

[Cyber07]

This is false and proves you don't know what you are talking about. Elon is ALWAYS quick to praise the hard work of the teams that carry out his vision. I can only think you just made that up out of thin air in a weak attempt to discredit Elon. I've heard him attribute the success of Tesla to his employees hundreds of times.

Talk about trying to create a false narrative!

Elon talk: making sporadic general statements as a corporate BS to give people credit as general. [No specifics. No general raising people profile]
Elon action: sacking and demoting highly motivated, high performing people, teams who actually made the company successful.

Talk is cheap. Actions speak louder then any words.

 

[HaulingAss]

That's the issue at hand and the reason the deal was overturned by the court, the board misrepresented the actual risk.

That is the claim of the court. but it is demonstratably false. Most people who actually voted on his original pay package disagree that they were misled. This is the court trying to re-write history. The fact that Elon succeeded does not imply it was easy. Most people still don't understand how Elon threaded the needle on so many details and potential wrong strategies that he avoided (because most people have never grown a car company from insignificant volumes to mass production). The claim that it was already a given is false.

We have one investor with 10 shares claiming he was misled. But he is an opportunistic plant of higher powers who are attempting to discredit (or even get rid of) Musk. That's how miuch of a threat Musk is to them. I mean, why would the lone shareholder be complaining when his shares more than 10X'ed in a very short period of time? Any investor that was even half-way informed on the issue of pay was well aware of what they were approving, it was all very straightforward, and in plain English.

The attacks need to be snuffed out so Elon can continue to lead the world to sustainable transport against great resistance to change.

 

[HaulingAss]

Elon talk: making sporadic general statements as a corporate BS to give people credit as general. [No specifics. No general raising people profile]
Elon action: sacking and demoting highly motivated, high performing people, teams who actually made the company successful.

Talk is cheap. Actions speak louder then any words.

Elon regularly fires the under-performing 10% of the people. This only threatens the type of person who is a habitual under-performer, just collecting a paycheck and not even trying very hard to move the needle forward.

Sometimes he even does wholesale reorganizations, like those to fix the billions of dollars Twitter was losing and the recent Supercharging team restart, for reasons that still remain somewhat unclear.

IMO, our society and our economy needs this kind of dynamic reorganization of labor forces, (coupled with better support for those temporarily displaced and those unable to work) to achieve higher standards of living, more time with families, more travel and more life experiences and higher pay, when working and contributing.

Stagnant working situations are bad for all, especially the workers themselves. People deserve to be put to the highest use, at the appropriate times and places, not to drone meaninglessly through life collecting a corporate paycheck and getting fat and lazy. Change is good!

 

[getsometom]

I'm on the "no" team for the pay package. Despite all the contributions Elon has made, there is no need for that much pay for a CEO. Just like J.D. Salinger, author of Catcher in the Rye said at a party to a much richer man than him...I have enough. Elon has enough.

 

[BannedByTMC]

That is the claim of the court. but it is demonstratably false. Most people who actually voted on his original pay package disagree that they were misled.

That's because they either don't understand that they were misled or don't care. You seem to fall into both of those categories. The claim of the board at the time was that these goals were a long shot when internally they believed the goals were likely to be met. Further they did not act as an independent board looking out for shareholder interest. This is a good summary:

Nominally, the board is supposed to negotiate for the lowest reasonable pay package for their choice of CEO to take the position.

The judge didn't believe it was the best possible price in Tesla's case.

“Swept up by the rhetoric of ‘all upside,’ or perhaps starry-eyed by Musk’s superstar appeal, the board never asked the $55.8 billion question: Was the plan even necessary for Tesla to retain Musk and achieve its goals?”

The court found that the board was essentially negotiating the best deal for Elon, which the shareholders weren't aware of. It also didn't find such compensation consistent with what an independent board of directors would reasonably negotiate with an independent CEO-for-hire. Effectively, both sides took a gamble, and hit a jackpot. Musk has the right to gamble in this manner, but a public corporation's board, according to this particular court ruling, is not.

https://law.stackexchange.com/quest...is-for-a-judge-voiding-elon-musks-pay-package

 

[HaulingAss]

That's because they either don't understand that they were misled or don't care. You seem to fall into both of those categories.

I don't fall into either category, I wasn't misled. That's why I'm voting the same way after all the "hidden" facts have been supposedly uncovered. Duh! And if any shareholder was somehow misled, it's their own damn fault. People need to take responsibility for themselves. I mean, we all knew that Kimball Musk was Elon Musk's brother, duh! The pay package was very transparent and upfront. The reason shareholders approved it by such a large margin was because it was very shareholder friendly. Shareholders made many times the $46 billion we voted for Elon, and we didn't have to do any of the work or decision making, we left that to Elon and reaped the wild rewards.

The claim of the board at the time was that these goals were a long shot when internally they believed the goals were likely to be met. Further they did not act as an independent board looking out for shareholder interest.

That's a re-writing of history by a misguided (or corrupt) judge. Obviously the judge doesn't know how internal planning works in a company with high-growth aspirations because she knows nothing about being an auto manufacturer. You have to plan for the best possible outcome, or it will never happen.

Furthermore, even if the company did believe the goals were to be met, that was under the obvious assumption that Elon was at the helm. Do you really think the same thing would have played out if Mary Barra was running Tesla during the same timeframe?

Of course not. You are just highlighting how unjust this ruling was. All legal rulings need to be fact based. Obviously, the judge tried to make it appear to be based on facts and principles, and she had a limited amount of success with a few people, but I don't think those people are the brightest bulbs in the room. Even the dumb-dumbs at CNBC thought the ruling was wacky.

 

[Crissa]

I don't fall into either category, I wasn't misled. That's...

Literally, dude, you admit to being misled in the next series of paragraphs.

Renumeration needs to be:

1. Required to retain the talent
2. That talent needs to be better than replacement
3. Goals need to be stated properly

The goals weren't, apparently, stretch goals. I thought they were likely to make them, yeah. But I was under the impression that the board was not - if there as nearly no chance for them to miss them, how was this renumeration required to retain the talent?

So it wasn't required for 1 and it was ruled to not be 3 - no matter how many times you say it wasn't, legally, that's the situation we're in.

They lied, the deal was revoked, and now we're seeing him put future growth at risk.

I vote no.

-Crissa