Shareholders of the electric vehicle company Tesla approved Thursday (June 13) the move to increase the pay package of its CEO, Elon Musk, to $56 million, thwarting a board coup plotted by large institutional investors and proxy firms.
Reuters reported that the approval, bolstered by the company's retail investor base, was a sign of continued corporate confidence in his leadership, as well as an incentive to keep Musk's focus on his biggest source of wealth.
Tesla has not disclosed Thursday's voting tallies, but were expected to be revealed in the coming days.
Morningstar Sustainalytics director Lindsey Stuart told Reuters that he was interested in the exact percentages of the votes, given the opposition by some shareholders.
Engadget also quoted Musk saying that the reinstatement of his pay would not affect his short-term commitment to Tesla.
Shareholders also approved a proposal to move the company's legal home from Delaware to Texas, as well as the re-election of two of its board members: Elon's brother Kimbal Musk and media mogul Rupert Murdoch's son, James.
Other proposals approved in the meeting include the increase of the level of investor control, despite board opposition, by shortening of board terms to one year and the lowering of voting requirements for proposals to a simple majority.
Elon Musk's Tesla Salary Row
The vote was made during Tesla's annual shareholder meeting in Austin, Texas, where Musk described himself as pathologically optimistic that his pay package proposal would be approved after hinting Wednesday (June 12) that a majority of shareholders support it.
However, the shareholder approval does not resolve a lawsuit filed in a Delaware court, which legal experts think could stretch for several months. In January, Delaware Chancery Court judge Kathaleen McCormick invalidated the pay package, describing it as "unfathomable."
Boston College Law School professor Brian Quinn said that the Delaware judge would scrutinize the vote and would require Tesla to prove that the process was not coerced or illicitly influenced by Musk.
This meant that Musk would face more lawsuits regarding the matter, which would add to the countless lawsuits and challenges he and his companies have been facing in the past few months, including disputes against Apple and OpenAI, especially after the two companies signed a partnership agreement where ChatGPT would be integrated into Apple's iOS mobile devices.
It could be recalled that the Wall Street Journal made an exclusive report this week revealing that Musk made advances on multiple women working on SpaceX, with at least one of them admitting in writing that she had sex with the tech billionaire while she was still with the spaceflight provider.
X Demands Aussie Ex-Employees to Return Extra Pay
Meanwhile, The Sydney Morning Herald reported earlier this week that X, the Musk-owned social media platform formerly known as Twitter, demanded money from at least six Australian former employees who were laid off, saying that the company accidentally overpaid them.
Ars Technica also quoted the Australian daily, which reported that the platform would threaten to take the said employees to court if they would not return the entitlements it claimed were overpaid to them after not converting the currency from the US dollar to the Australian dollar.
X's Asia-Pacific human resources department sent emails to the laid-off employees this year, saying that there was a "significant overpayment ... error" that happened in January 2023, which ranged from $1,500 to $70,000 for each employee.
None of the former employees have repaid the money, the Herald reported.
The issue is but one of many the platform has been facing in recent months and years.
X has been sued in court by multiple entities in at least two countries.
In the United States, it is facing lawsuits and arbitration claims from about 2,000 ex-employees who were fighting to receive severance packages, as well as from former Twitter C-suite executives, including former CEO Parag Agrawal, who were cheated out of more than $128 million in severance when Musk took over the platform and fired them.
The company is also facing another legal battle across the Pacific after the Australian eSafety Commissioner refiled its lawsuit against X, which centered on the stabbing incident at a church in Sydney, that injured Assyrian Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel.
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