The multimillion-dollar compensation offered by Tesla to its CEO, Elon Musk, is at the center of a trial that begins this Monday and in which a small investor in the electric vehicle manufacturer faces the richest man in the world.
In the process, which is being held in a specialized court in the state of Delaware and is expected to last about a week, the compensation package that the company approved in 2018 for Musk, with a value of up to 56,000 million dollars, is at stake.
The remuneration, the highest known for an executive, was linked to the achievement of certain goals and was in the form of company shares, so the higher its price, the more Musk would receive. With company stocks skyrocketing during the pandemic, Musk became the world’s richest person in 2021.
The lawsuit to be decided in Delaware argues that the businessman used his power over the company and its board of directors to obtain that extraordinary compensation package, with a series of objectives that were easy to achieve and that were not adequately explained to shareholders.
The plaintiff, Richard J. Tornetta, also denounces that Musk did not have full dedication to Tesla and that he himself designed that remuneration to have funds with which to finance other personal projects, mainly space exploration.
The case will be heard in the same court that for months dealt with the lawsuit filed against Musk by Twitter after he broke the agreement to take over the social network and that did not go to trial because at the last moment the billionaire backed down and accepted the agreement.
The process, in which Musk himself is expected to testify, comes with the businessman focused on the management of his new company, where in just two weeks he has fired half the staff and has scared off many advertisers with new bets such as payment verification and promises of less content moderation.
