Judge Sinks Elon Musk’s $56B Tesla Pay Package

Judge confirms the decision to sink Elon Musk's $56 billion pay package despite the Tesla shareholder vote. Musk won't get the salary he wanted. Elon Musk has had his Tesla pay blocked by a judge. Yes, $56 billion pay award will not be reinstated. So originally, Elon Musk had a $56 billion pay package.

For performing.

For performing.

Insane goals that were basically unachievable.

And for a company that wasn't doing well at all financially.

Yep.

And it had a potential of going under, but he not only saved the company, he made it, you know, blow up in a good way. So the original judge decided, you know what, forget you, Elon, you're not going to get this money. All right.

Because one person, a very small shareholder said, hey, you know what? I don't think he should get it. It's unfair.

Yes. Even though he was the one who made the shareholders tons of money as well. So the judge is like, all right, you're not getting paid. So then Musk, you know, of course he moved his business to Texas. I think they moved their incorporation too out of Delaware to Texas, I believe. I'm not sure about that. It was some state or it was to Delaware, wherever they ended up changing it to. They casted a shareholder vote. The shareholders said, yes, we believe you should get paid your $56 billion.

The vast majority of them.

Yeah. Well, he won majority. And then again today, judge decided I don't know if it's the same or a different one, but a judge decided that he's not going to get paid his $56 billion, even though the shareholders voted that he should, the majority. And here's the kicker. The plaintiff's attorney, right? The people who are fighting against him, they just got awarded $345 million from the judge.

You know what this is? This is, this is the same thing that like, I don't care which side you're on. This is lawfare, right? Where like they went after the, the president-elect before and they tried to like go after him for all these like, Um, small things. It wasn't even like big charges, right? It was like, um, accounting fraud or whatever, right? And they made him, made him into a convicted felon. In this case, this is like, they're just— this guy performed, and this guy— we were talking about meritocracy, right? This guy performed, and then his shareholders voted that he should get the money, and yet at the same time, they're still going to take it away.

And, and the judge has nothing to do with the company. The law has nothing to do with the business. Shareholders want the CEO to get paid because they believe he deserves it, majority of them, and yet The government wants to step in and say, no, we don't care what your shareholders and the people who own your stock say. You don't get it. And you know what? We're going to give the attorney who sued you guys $345 million for his service.

It just goes to show you not everything's fair. This is just how our incentives are set up. You know, show me the incentive, I'll show you the outcome. The thing that for sure, even a couple months ago, people were just like, it's going to become way harder to do business in Delaware because before Delaware was a cool state to do business in. Because they were flexible, right?

Not anymore.

Definitely not flexible in this case. And so where you decide to do business matters at the end of the day. I think we still believe that America is still the best place to do business, but stuff like this makes it way harder. I do believe with Elon and Vivek coming in and then, you know, Trump's, Trump's administration coming in, this will probably get rolled back.

No, I think it's over with.

You think it's over with?

This is the second time.

I think— come on. I don't know how many times you're not just gonna let $56 billion go away.

Yeah, but with the US law, I don't think you can keep fighting the same thing over Well, I think we'd have to look into—

I don't know what—

I don't know law, but the first time he didn't get what he wanted, so I believe he did appeal or something and to refight it, and then he lost the second time.

I don't know if there's a limit to how many times you can sue for something. Uh, and if there is—

this I know, there is a limit.

If there is, it's not just 2. I think, I think it's got to be at least like 3 strikes, you know? It's arbitrary. It's like, we want, we want 2% inflation rate. Where does that come from? It's arbitrary.

Yeah.

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And knowing these lawyers, they can find something else to sue for that's quasi-related and try to get the money, but it's just screwed up.

I think the other thing too is like, this is another, You know, the difference between Elon Musk versus the Zara founder Ortega, do you know what the difference is? So, Zara is very big, right? It's a conglomerate, right? And he owns the— I don't know if you know this, the Zara founder owns a bunch of like $20 billion worth of real estate. And he basically rents out space to like the Facebooks of the world, right? Or the, um, like a lot of big tech companies.

No, I didn't know that.

My point is he came from nothing. He built his company up. I don't know how big Zara is right now, Um, but Zara drives the lion's share of that group's revenue. The point is, he's always been about not taking any pictures in public. He's always been about not being famous. He just wants to work really hard, right? He works when it's the holidays. He works when it's— he just loves working, right? And, um, I think Elon, like, I think we both think he's a great entrepreneur. I think there is a downside to becoming the most followed person on X, for example, right? And saying what you want.

Yeah.

Um, this is also why so many people hate Trump too. So many people hate Elon. It's because You know, they speak their mind and I respect them for doing it. But the other argument is maybe you just want to be rich and anonymous.

I think the best is to be rich and anonymous. It is. Elon, of course, is on a mission, although I think social media has changed. It's starting to be okay to say what's on your mind.

Well, the Overton window, do you know? We should explain the Overton window. Do you know what the Overton window is? I do not. Okay, so you'll know what it is. The Overton window is basically the window around the things that you can and you can't say. So now the things that you can say is like, hey, no more ESG stuff, okay? You see Walmart rolling back DEI. You see Toyota rolling back DEI. Those things are now okay to say, and people are pushing back now. So, but you couldn't do that like two three years ago. That is it for today. Go to marketing school dot io slash agency. By the way, that price keeps going up. It just doubled last yesterday, actually. So yeah, go check it out, and we'll see you tomorrow.