The full-throated push to grant Tesla CEO Elon Musk a pay package now valued at $100 billion was shut down by a judge this week.
In a 101-page opinion, Delaware Court Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick declined to reverse a previous decision to scrap Musks’ pay. Essentially, she wrote, the arguments presented by the defense representing Tesla and some of its board members were “creative,” but missed the mark. McCormick had previously rescinded Musk’s pay in a prior ruling, and, after losing at trial, Tesla held a new stockholder say-on-pay vote in June 2024 in a bid to pay Musk what the Tesla board said it rightly owed him. Tesla chairperson Robyn Denholm told shareholders the board stood behind the compensation package, and rallied investors to reapprove Musk’s pay as a way to undo the court’s decision, which shareholders overwhelmingly did in a vote that garnered 72% support in June 2024.
