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A Delaware judge invalidated Elon Musk’s $56 billion Tesla pay package for a second time, citing undue influence and unfair terms set by Musk. Despite shareholder approval earlier this year, the court ruled the process failed to address governance concerns and transparency. The judge emphasized the board’s failure to prove the compensation plan’s fairness, suggesting alternative, reasonable payment options were possible. Tesla may appeal the decision or propose a new compensation plan.

  • Linktank@lemmy.today
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    20 days ago

    Why does he get to keep appealing if it’s already been struck down twice? Fuck this guy.

    • meyotch@slrpnk.net
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      20 days ago

      Risk vs Reward.

      A relatively small cost towards legal fees has a decent chance to yield a large payoff.

      Musk is a warped gollum-man, but not an idiot by any means.

      • sepi@piefed.social
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        20 days ago

        The man is one of the greatest idiots of this generation. There’s just a bunch of really dumb impressionable people falling for his lies. Doesn’t make him smart.

      • 100_kg_90_de_belin @feddit.it
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        19 days ago

        He’s a sociopath with absolutely no moral compass. This may have made him a great CEO, but it doesn’t mean he’s smart.

    • danc4498@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      Different packages were struck down I think. The first he appealed and failed. So they approved another package this year and this is the result.

      Imagine what $51 billion would do for the average Tesla employee if it were split up evenly amongst all employees. But yes, give this one guy more money than he can ever use in infinite lifetimes.

      • adarza@lemmy.ca
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        19 days ago

        the 56b divvied up would be about 400k per employee (based on 2023 headcount from wiki). i think he’s fired more than hired this year, so it’d be a bit more than that.

        • danc4498@lemmy.world
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          19 days ago

          Life changing amounts of money. Instead he’s getting bragging rights to the 5 other people in the world like him.

            • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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              19 days ago

              I didn’t think he’d mind the paraphrase. It’s another idea Carlin talked about in his shows.

              • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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                19 days ago

                Unlike the politicians and fatcats so loudly celebrated when they lived and so mourned when they died, by the Media, George Carlin was one of the truly great people of the second half of the XX century.

      • Mnemnosyne@sh.itjust.works
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        19 days ago

        We just need a general rule: no company may offer more in compensation to any person than one hundred times the value the company paid in compensation to its lowest paid worker.

        Add in words and details to make sure there aren’t any loopholes, of course, and the problem will be largely solved across the board.

        • danc4498@lemmy.world
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          19 days ago

          I think even that would have issues. The fix is easy. Tax the holy fuck out of any earnings over $10 million. You can take that payment away from your company, but it will do very little to benefit you.

  • 58008@lemmy.world
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    20 days ago

    The replies on Twitter to Musk’s legal team complaining about this decision are equal parts hilarious and day-ruining. People are really cheering for this man to get ~55 billion dollars. Like, it hurts their actual feelings that he’s been denied such a payment, and they offer words of support to Musk like he’s doing a life sentence and has been denied DNA testing that would prove his innocence by a capricious judge who built her political career on the initial murder trial.

    I hope they’re just bots. Bots expertly-programmed to annoy me specifically.

  • Botzo@lemmy.world
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    19 days ago

    That would be more than the entire market cap of Ford. Or VW, Honda, BMW, Hyundai, Stellantis, etc.

    Truly preposterous.

      • LANIK2000@lemmy.world
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        19 days ago

        They actually do generate enough revenue in a year. Ignoring business expenses ofc. That would be the 15b figure below. Elon is quite literally asking for an amount that would be comparable to liquidating all of tesla, selling off every scrap.

    • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today
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      19 days ago

      People look at the number and nothing else.

      Go back to when this pay package was crafted. The basic deal was, here’s a King’s ransom to do the impossible. Nobody ever thought that the performance targets required to trigger this payout were possible. Tesla achieved that. Elon and achieved that. And the stock continued to go up. Keep in mind, most of the money here is in stock not cash. So the 56 billion dollar number is only because the stock has continued to rise.

      I say pay the man.

      • GHiLA@sh.itjust.works
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        19 days ago

        I’m glad your generation isn’t getting laid, I’d hate for there to be more dumbasses that need to justify why a billionaire needs more billions.

        I say hang the man.

        on a ceiling fan for fun until there’s a red streak across the wall in every direction, then make it a memorial to American workers.

        His kind eats entire generations of wealth. He’s an enemy to you and everything prosperity stands for. If Trump wants to start ejecting immigrants, he can start with that one.

        • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today
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          18 days ago

          I’m not ‘justifying why a billionaire needs more billions’.
          I’m saying that your personal opinion of Musk doesn’t fucking matter. Neither does mine. What matters is facts. You may think he’s an asshole, but if you can’t objectively recognize that he’s achieved a lot, if his current political misadventures must necessarily invalidate his past accomplishments and make him unworthy of any praise in your mind, then you’re a small minded fool blinded by your own hatred.

          He’s an enemy to you and everything prosperity stands for.

          Perhaps. But if it wasn’t for Tesla, electric cars would still be ‘10 years away’. Do you deny that?

          • Doomsider@lemmy.world
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            18 days ago

            He is a Nepo baby manchild who bought his way into everything. He has a team of handlers who keep him from doing and saying shit so he won’t fuck things up worse than he already has.

            He spends his free time playing video games, twatting, and doing drugs. He ignores his twelve kids and pretends to be CEO of two companies while having involvement with five others.

            He fucks his staff and threatens to sexually assault women for fun. Your opinion of him is so far from the truth one could only conclude you literally have no fucking clue or are surgically attached to his ass in order to swallow all his shit.

            • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today
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              18 days ago

              Actually I suspect I know more about him than you do.

              I didn’t know of him in the PayPal days. I did know of Tesla though. I was reading their blog as their then-CEO Martin Eberhard was trying to make the original Roadster into a reality. Eberhard was focused on a design that involved a two-speed gearbox, you could select gear 1 for more power or gear 2 for more range/higher speed, and switch between the two at any time (including while driving). The problem is, making a gearbox and synchromesh that will reliably shift under load at 16,000 RPM is tough. Making it last the life of the car, and be cheap enough to put in a car, is double-tough.
              So I watched that blog as they tried for about two years, going through different transmission vendors and designs.
              That was when I first heard of Elon. He was one of the initial founders of Tesla, one of the largest investors. And after a year or two he stepped in and started throwing his weight around. He pushed Eberhard out and stepped in as CEO. And his first choice was to dump the transmission entirely, focus on engineering a larger / more powerful / more efficient electric motor that could deliver good acceleration through a single-speed reduction gear.
              That got the Roadster out the door.

              Point is- while he may have stepped into the big chair like a bull in a china shop, he was right. He quickly identified the objectively correct engineering decisions and started Tesla on the right path.

              Look at SpaceX. Elon basically built SpaceX from the ground up. Him and Tom Mueller (designer of the Merlin rocket engine) were the first two employees.

              I’m not claiming he’s a saint. I personally know people who have worked directly for him. Everyone inside and outside his companies agrees he’s kind of an asshole sometimes and he rides his people absurdly hard with no concept of work life balance. And lately he’s gone a bit off the rails with his politics.

              But I am claiming, and I think objective history shows, that he is effective. Being an asshole doesn’t invalidate that.

              • Doomsider@lemmy.world
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                18 days ago

                Wow, you have constructed quite the fantasy world for Muskrat. One where his is an innovator, hard but consistent, a mentor, a teacher, an imperfect vessel who is more good than bad.

                Pardon me while I throw up. He is not actually CEO of two companies. That is not even possible. He is not also involved with five other companies, he doesn’t have the time. He doesn’t take care of his twelve kids and is on record already disowning his child like the piece of shit he is.

                He does not know more about manufacturing than anyone else. He knows what he pays people to tell him. He is a charlatan and a conman by trade. He lies and says he will deliver on driverless taxis (one of his many lies) to drive up his stock. That is fucking fraud my friend.

                He is instead a drug addict narcissist loser who pretends he knows shit but just borrows and buys all the advice he needs. A classic Nepo baby whose degenerative behavior runs in his family.

                Twelve kids with three partners and probably a lot more he has paid to abort or threatened to silence. One thing we do know is he spends a lot of time trying to and fucking his employees.

                If he was a saint he would the the saint of misinformation. He bought a company with other people’s money and let them turn it into a propaganda outlet used to manipulate countries and subvert democracy.

                Everyone says he is a raging asshole. His previous partners say they can’t recognize him anymore.

                You know what though? I am going to trust Sir Special Ed a Lot on this and start sucking Elon’s butthole.

                • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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                  18 days ago

                  One thing no one can deny is he is one of the world’s best modern con artists. Between what he has done to make a killing in crypto pseudo-legally and him dodging SEC violations like Neo from the Matrix is super impressive.

                • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today
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                  10 days ago

                  He is not actually CEO of two companies. That is not even possible.

                  You betray your own ignorance. It’s absolutely possible to be CEO of multiple companies. Ask any entrepreneur- a great many of them are running multiple businesses.

                  If you want to argue that it’s not possible to be a GOOD ATTENTIVE CEO of multiple companies because there’s not enough hours in the day, that’s valid and a lot of people have criticized him for that.

                  He doesn’t take care of his twelve kids

                  I’m sure he gives them lots of money. But in terms of real time- I doubt he spends much time being a dad because he simply doesn’t give himself the time to spend. I’m sure his kids get like an hour or two a week or something.

                  He is instead a drug addict

                  Why, because he smoked a joint on a podcast? I get that you hate him but when you make criticisms like this you betray your own position, that you’re striking out because you hate him not because you have valid criticisms. It takes away from your actual criticisms (some of which are valid).

                  Everyone says he is a raging asshole.

                  I never said he wasn’t. In fact I personally know multiple people who have worked almost directly for him. They quit because in Elon world there’s no work life balance there’s just the work and you’re expected to devote all your time to it like he does.

                  I’d probably never want to work for him. From what I hear, he is quite an asshole sometimes especially to his employees. That doesn’t mean he’s never done anything good, or that he’s incapable of good.

                  Few things in life are black and white. Most are shades of gray.

              • Alex@lemmy.world
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                18 days ago

                You’re moving the conversation off-topic, ceo-salary is out of control and this “paypackage” is ridiculous.

                • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today
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                  14 days ago

                  CEO salary is in most cases out of control. But you’re ignoring that most of this compensation is in stock. The only reason it’s worth so much today is because Tesla stock went up so much. It wasn’t worth nearly as much when the package was signed.

          • GHiLA@sh.itjust.works
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            18 days ago

            Yes, because Electric-car and self-driving aren’t a combo deal.

            Every Tesla runs on the same battery they did before there were Teslas, hundreds of 18650s, and golf carts had regen braking.

            If it seems like a lot of our progress is just smoke and mirrors, it mostly is.

            • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today
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              18 days ago

              18650’s existed. But nobody was putting them in cars. All the prototype cars automakers were showing off used large format pouch cells. These had various issues with heat and longevity and safety and thermal expansion. Using 18650’s in a car was a Tesla invention.

              Teslas today no longer use 18650s, they use 2170s and 4680s, both cell formats brought into mainstream by Tesla.

              The bigger issue is nobody was building electric cars!! All the pieces of tech existed but nobody was bothering to put them together. A big part of Tesla’s mission (which they accomplished) was basically to embarrass mainstream automakers into building EVs. That’s worked.

              That’s what I credit Tesla/Elon with doing- actually building a damn EV and selling it.

              • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world
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                17 days ago

                Martin Eberhard et al built Tesla. They hacked a Porsche Lotus Elise apart and used laptop cells to make it scary fast, and inexpensive. Musk never founded the company, nor did he contribute to the engineering in a meaningful way.

                Melon isn’t an engineer, he’s a fuckin dead weight clown who is damn good at convincing people he matters.

                • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today
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                  14 days ago

                  I was literally watching it happen.

                  Musk, Eberhard, and a few others came together to build an electric sports car. The only reason Musk isn’t listed as a ‘founder’ is because one of them already had an LLC registered and it saved them some paperwork to reuse that.

                  I understand you dislike him and that’s fine, but calling him names just makes you look like an uneducated buffoon.

  • adarza@lemmy.ca
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    20 days ago

    i’ll be tesla ceo for 0.1% (1/1000) of that. i couldn’t possibly be worse than 1/1000th of an elon, or even 1/100th of one, so i’m the far better deal.

    • RedWeasel@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      There are millions of random internet users that could do a better job than him. And most if not all of them would be willing to work for 0.01% of that. The guy is successful in spite of himself at this point.

      • adarza@lemmy.ca
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        19 days ago

        line everybody up, take turns. ceo for five minutes then retire, collect $2.33 million paycheck, then the next guy is ‘hired’.

    • Red_October@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      To be fair all you have to do is publicly announce that you’re going to focus on improving build quality and not shitposting and you’d already be a better CEO.

  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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    20 days ago

    However, McCormick in her latest ruling, wrote: “Even if a stockholder vote could have a ratifying effect, it could not do so here.”

    What, so the package the stockholders voted on was the original package already deemed illegal in court? And apparently because that deal was illegal, it can’t be voted through by stockholders?

    Am I getting this right? Because that seems incredibly stupid by the lawyers advising Trump and Tesla!

    • Alex@lemmy.world
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      18 days ago

      They wouldn’t have done it without Elon’s direction, easy bill-able hours for them.

  • EnderMB@lemmy.world
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    19 days ago

    To put this pay into perspective, you could take it and give everyone in the US that is living in poverty around $1400. It wouldn’t necessarily save them from poverty, but such an amount would undoubtedly help over a million people in a dire situation.

  • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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    19 days ago

    Some good news! I can’t believe that Tesla shareholders approved this when all Tesla indicators essentially form a giant mount of downward facing red arrows at that time.

    It’s hard to believe that I was about to buy a Tesla just 8 years ago, and today I can not cringe when I see the brand. I hope someone does real market research on this, but the downfall of the company has been nothing short of fascinating.

    • PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@feddit.uk
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      19 days ago

      Tesla doesn’t pay dividends so the shareholders (the majority of which are Elon sycophants) lose nothing from approving this bonus.

      It’s a meme stock, nothing more