Elon Musk says Tesla shareholders are backing his $56bn pay package; markets cling onto soft landing hopes – business live | Business

But before this saga slips out of the headlines, there is the small matter of what the Delaware judge, Kathaleen McCormick, actually said in her 200-page judgment in January. Read the whole thing and the board of Tesla in 2018 comes across as a collection of patsies who were so in thrall to the boss that they were incapable of running even a semi-robust process for setting his incentives.

Nobody disputes that Tesla’s share price had to perform a minor miracle to deliver Musk’s prize in full: from a valuation of $50bn-ish, the requirement was to get above $650bn by 2028 (which actually happened in just three years). Rather, the problem was the people Tesla put in charge of negotiating with Musk to determine a fair jackpot.

As the judge noted, Ira Ehrenpreis, the lead director, had a 15-year business relationship with Musk. Another member of the working group, Antonio Gracias, went on holiday with Musk’s family. A third was Todd Maron, Musk’s former divorce attorney and the company’s general counsel, “whose admiration for Musk moved him to tears during his deposition”.

McCormick concluded that the process behind the award was “deeply flawed” and the terms “not entirely fair” to all shareholders: in essence, Musk said what he wanted and received minimal push-back.