Tesla’s board proposes a supercharged compensation package.
For a few precarious hours last week, Elon Musk reportedly lost his title as the world’s richest man. Larry Ellison, the mustachioed yachtsman behind the software giant Oracle, got to wear that crown for almost a full business day before Musk’s wealth inched up yet again, eclipsing Ellison’s $383 billion fortune by a sliver.
Phew! Luckily for Musk, Tesla’s board of directors already has a plan to keep its man on top for good—and make him a trillionaire in the process. The scheme is a key component of the electric-car manufacturer’s road map for its next 10 years: Ahead of Tesla’s annual general meeting in November, the board is proposing that if Musk carries the company to an $8.5 trillion valuation—well beyond what any other firm is worth right now—and meets certain operational milestones, he gets a bundle of stock that would be worth about $900 billion at those prices. Another way to conceptualize it is that if shareholders accept the board’s proposals, and Musk succeeds, he would be personally rewarded with more than 80 percent of the current market value of his company.
