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Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO Elon Musk denied claims that his high salary was improperly approved in a Delaware court on Wednesday.
Tesla’s (TSLA) “technoking” is facing a lawsuit from its alleged owners The operating expenses approved in 2018 of more than $55B were provided and approved by the compensation committee and the board that improperly influenced Musk and allowed him to serve as interim CEO. In particular, it accuses the members of the board of having conflicts of interest and says that the vote of the shareholders to rubber stamp the payment plan was based on proxy statements that did not accurately describe the problems that caused the payment and to hide the aforementioned conflicts.
The capital stock that was approved in January 2018 started at $0 and only increased based on Tesla’s (TSLA) stock market performance to a value of $650B. At the time, The New York Times called the package “perhaps the most daring compensation plan in corporate history.” As the automaker crossed the $1T market cap by 2021, Musk was able to hit 11 of the 12 goals set by the compensation plan.
In addition to denying claims that he influenced the design of the package, Musk supported the company’s efforts to demonstrate its commitment to Tesla.
“I was thinking too much about the execution of the company,” he said.
Board chairwoman Robyn Denholm agreed, telling the court that the large payouts were necessary to allow Musk to focus on space travel, boring tunnels, and social hubs. Doing motivational exercises was the best way to keep his attention, in his opinion.
“It was an inspiration to him to achieve things that were brave and courageous and to invest his time and energy in areas other than his interests,” Denholm said.
Elsewhere, Musk said he will soon “find someone to run Twitter (TWTR) in the long run” as he plans to reduce the amount of time he spends focusing on the newly acquired platform.
Read more on Morgan Stanley’s thoughts on the Twitter crash for Tesla shares.
