Tesla shareholders re-approve Elon Musk’s 2018 pay package, Musk says

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SAN FRANCISCO — Tesla shareholders re-approved Elon Musk’s 2018 pay package by a wide margin, Musk posted on X Wednesday night, appearing to resolve a question that has loomed over his future with the company.

A Delaware judge invalidated the package, worth as much as $56 billion, earlier this year, arguing that the process that led to the deal had been unfair. As part of the deal, Musk was granted stock options as Tesla hit certain valuation milestones, accumulating massive amounts of shares that led to a record pay deal and played a hand in making Musk the richest person in the world.

The shareholder vote does not immediately restore Musk’s pay, but it sends a strong signal that the deal has the broad support of Tesla’s investors. In the months leading up to the vote, investors large and small were split on whether to support the package. While some major shareholders criticized him as a distracted leader who doesn’t deserve such a reward, others lauded him for being a generational genius.

“Our answer is clear, loud and unequivocal: Tesla is better with Elon. Tesla is Elon,” said Ron Baron, a billionaire and investor in Tesla, who said Musk was indispensable to Tesla and that his compensation must recognize that fact.

Investors and Musk’s supporters, including X CEO Linda Yaccarino, applauded the preliminary results late Wednesday. Musk — who remains among the richest people regardless of whether he keeps the pay package — also pledged in a tweet Wednesday night that he would make Tesla the most valuable company on Earth.

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Musk and a Tesla spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Wednesday.

“This shows that shareholder votes can matter,” James Park, a professor at the UCLA School of Law, who studies securities regulation and corporate law, said this week before the vote. “Sometimes they are just rubber-stamping what the board has proposed, but this is corporate democracy in action.”

In a January post on X, Musk threatened to pull back from the company and build futuristic technology — such as robotics and artificial intelligence — “outside of Tesla,” before the invalidated pay package threatened to further erode his control. Such a future was a daunting prospect for the electric-vehicle maker, as it reels from weak sales, global competition and mass layoffs.

Several key investors were vocal about their position ahead of Thursday’s meeting, but others stayed silent, leaving the result unclear until Musk’s X post late Wednesday night. Tesla’s largest investors, Vanguard Group, BlackRock and State Street, which collectively own about 17 percent of Tesla stock, did not publicly state their positions. None responded to requests for comment Wednesday night.

The full results are expected to be revealed Thursday at a Tesla shareholder meeting in Austin. Musk, in his post, indicated that the number of votes in favor of restoring his pay had surpassed a threshold needed to guarantee a victory on his part.

After the decision from Delaware’s Court of Chancery in January, Musk unleashed on the state where Tesla — and many businesses — are incorporated.

“Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware,” he posted, before launching a poll and announcing a decision to hold a shareholder vote on incorporating in Texas instead. In his post Wednesday, Musk said shareholders also approved Tesla incorporating in Texas.