Musk responded to the court decision with just one short sentence on the short message service X, formerly Twitter: “Never register your company in the state of Delaware.” The Tesla share price fell by more than 3.5 percent in after-hours trading.
Tesla investor Richard Tornetta went to court against Musk, Tesla and several members of the Tesla board of directors. Tornetta accuses the 52-year-old multi-billionaire of “unjust enrichment”. At that time, the company boss was able to impose his conditions on the Tesla board of directors, which was not sufficiently independent.
According to legal documents, Musk received stock options worth more than $52 billion over four and a half years after the electric car maker met its goals. Tornetta speaks of the largest salary ever awarded to a manager. His lawyers on Tuesday welcomed Judge McCormic’s decision, which is still subject to appeal.
Musk defended his Tesla salary package during an interview in court in November 2022. When the share package was approved in 2018, investors thought “that we would fail and go bankrupt,” said the multi-billionaire. “We were in a pretty tough situation back then, we lost a lot of money. The probability of survival was extremely low.”
The automotive industry has been making fun of Tesla for a long time, Musk said. “They thought electric vehicles were a joke.” Tesla only achieved its breakthrough with the enormous success of its Model 3.
According to the business magazine Forbes, as of Tuesday, Musk is the richest person in the world with a fortune of more than $210 billion, followed by the French luxury goods mogul Bernard Arnault. In addition to Tesla, the controversial entrepreneur also runs the space company SpaceX and bought the short message service Twitter, which has now been renamed X, in autumn 2022.
The South African-born entrepreneur is also active in several other sectors, including the booming topic of artificial intelligence (AI) and the construction of tunnels. Last weekend, his start-up company Neuralink, which specializes in brain implants, used a chip on a patient for the first time since it was founded in 2016.
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