Gerber Kawasaki co-founder and Tesla Bull Ross Gerber recently shared a post on X, slamming the Tesla board who, he alleges it of acting solely for CEO Elon Musk’s interests. Gerber remarks come as the electric car maker’s crucial annual general meeting (AGM) approaches on November 6. During the AGM, the company is expected to reach a decision on Musk’s $1 trillion compensation package, one of the largest in corporate history.In the post, Gerber wrote:“I’ve never seen a worse BOD than tesla. It’s so transparent that they all represent Elons interests and zero representation of the other 85% of the company. It’s absurd to basically give Elon Musk $1 trillion of teslas shareholder value for a set of arbitrary goals. Based around a threat to leave too.”
Elon Musk’s $1 trillion pay package proposed
In September this year, the Tesla board proposed a $1 trillion compensation plan for CEO Elon Musk. The newly proposed award is roughly 18 times the size of the 2018 pay package. In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the company said that “traditional compensation packages granted to executives at other companies were determined to not be appropriate for designing Mr. Musk’s incentive compensation.”Notably, the new pay package comes with a condition – 10 million active FSD subscriptions for Tesla and 1 million Tesla robotaxis on the road. FSD, as explained in the SEC filing “means an advanced driving system, regardless of the marketing name used, that is capable of performing transportation tasks that provide autonomous or similar functionality under specified driving conditions”.
Tesla board chairman writes open letter
Elon Musk’s proposed pay has faced criticism from many groups. Addressing the concerns, Tesla board chairperson Robyn Denholm recently wrote an open letter to shareholders describing proxy advisory firms – ISS and Glass Lewis’ criticism of Elon Musk’s pay package as ‘misguided recommendations’. The letter said that these companies are “fundamentally unable to evaluate companies, like Tesla, that chart their own course and challenge the status quo.” Denholm urged shareholders to ignore ISS’s and Glass Lewis’s advice for this year’s Annual Meeting which is scheduled for November 8. In the letter, he clarifies that Musk’s $1 trillion pay is a ‘performance incentive award’ which is “contingent on delivering products that support Elon’s vision for Sustainable Abundance, addresses shareholder concerns regarding retention and long-term succession, and ultimately creates extraordinary shareholder value.”
