Tesla – What if Elon Musk Were Fired?

The rebellion is growing among Tesla shareholders against Elon Musk’s highly divisive management style.

When everything is going well, a foothold is quite useful. But when things start to go sour, the fuse is the obvious target. Except that, by constantly repeating that he is the owner of Tesla, Elon Musk risks exposing himself to mockery. Because in reality, this is not the case. With still 12.9% of the shares of the American electric vehicle manufacturer, Musk is certainly the largest shareholder, but not the owner.

It’s all a matter of semantics, and while highly powerful investment funds are currently losing tens of billions of dollars in valuation due to the stock price collapse, the dialogue is becoming strained.

Elon Musk had promised the Indian president to visit his country in the coming days, but the trip has been canceled and postponed indefinitely. Not really the type of gesture expected from a representative of a major global economic power, unless there’s a really good reason.

The timing is indeed tense for Musk. Earlier this year, the man who remains Tesla’s CEO requested an exceptional compensation of $55 billion to reward his efforts over the years. A Delaware judge dismissed this request, siding with a group of shareholders.

An accumulation of bad decisions?

Musk is making a new push this April 2024 to have shareholders vote on this decision. But isn’t that like throwing a stick to get hit? Can we seriously expect major funds like BlackRock, Vanguard, or State Street Corp., which are no strangers to controversy, to give such a gift when they are losing millions of dollars every day and no clear horizon is in sight?

Tesla is struggling, sales are declining, 10% of the global workforce will be laid off, and upcoming plans do not address urgent issues (Robotaxi, Semi, Cybertruck…). In short, the $55 billion at stake in negotiations are not timely.

As a reminder, Elon Musk sold nearly $40 billion worth of Tesla shares in November 2021 to buy the social network in October 2022 (rebranded as X). The capital gain on Tesla shares forced him to pay over $4 billion in taxes to the US tax authorities. Since then, X has only been losing money.

It’s uncertain whether Musk has proven, for the past two years, to have made the most prudent financial choices…

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