In the midst of the turmoil following his purchase of Twitter got to Tesla-Boss Elon Musk will be in court to answer questions about his $56 billion compensation package with the electric car maker. When this was agreed in 2017, he thought it “extremely unlikely” that his company, which was struggling at the time, would be successful, Musk said on Wednesday as a witness in the Delaware court case.
At the time, he was fully focused on Tesla and by no means dictated the terms of his payment. The lawsuit filed in 2018 by Tesla shareholder Richard Tornetta is being negotiated. He wants to prove that Musk exploited his dominance and determined the conditions of the bonus plan himself.
When the block of shares with a current value of around $ 50 billion (around 48 billion euros) was decided, investors thought “that we would fail and go bankrupt,” said Musk.
“We were in a pretty tough situation back then, we lost a lot of money,” the richest person in the world said. “The probability of survival was extremely low.” The auto industry has long made fun of Tesla. “They thought EVs were a joke,” Musk said. Tesla only made the breakthrough with the tremendous success of its Model 3.
According to the plaintiff, the specified performance targets for Musk were easily achievable. It was not even requested that the company boss devote his full workload to the US electric car pioneer. Even then, he was only a part-time boss, since he was also responsible for the space rocket company SpaceX led. With the online platform Twitter, he expanded his company empire to about half a dozen.
Under the rules of the bonus package, Musk could buy 1 percent of Tesla stock at a deep discount for achieving each of a dozen goals. Eleven of the goals have now been completed. Tesla became the most valuable publicly traded automaker with a market value of $650 billion, Musk the richest person in the world.
Musk wants to find new boss for Twitter
He would not have accepted a requirement to work after the time clock to prove his working hours, Musk explained. “I work almost all the time,” he said. The manager had previously told anecdotes that during the worst production problems at Tesla, he was constantly at the company and spent the night on the factory floor. It’s the same now – Musk says he’s currently working around the clock at the company’s San Francisco headquarters to resolve issues, according to his own statement on Twitter. Musk’s defense attorneys said the bonus plan was drawn up by independent board members who consulted with outside advisors and major shareholders.
Normally, shareholder lawsuits against manager pay in US courts have little chance of success. The process was opened because Musk is also Tesla’s largest shareholder and then stricter regulations apply.
Musk also spoke in court about his future on Twitter. According to the new Twitter owner, he assumes that he will spend less time with the short message service in the future. In any case, sooner or later someone else will be running Twitter, the Tesla boss said on Wednesday during a court hearing in Delaware. “After the takeover, there must first be a storm of activity to reorganize the company,” said the billionaire. “But I expect to reduce my time on Twitter afterwards.” Since coming to power, Musk has been turning the social network inside out at breakneck speed. Among other things, he initiated a wave of layoffs.