Elon Musk testifies he was not involved in 2018 Tesla pay package

Nov. 16 (UPI) — Elon Musk testified Wednesday that he was not involved in the decision-making process regarding a pay package that granted billions of dollars in stock options, helping to make him the world’s richest person.

The trial in Wilmington, Del., centers on Musk’s 2018 CEO pay package. Shareholder Richard Tornetta has sued Musk and Tesla alleging that the CEO compensation was excessive, and that its authorization by the Tesla board amounted to a breach of its fiduciary duty.

Musk pushed back on accusations that the company’s board was stacked with friends and people close to him.

“I was completely focused” on managing Tesla, he said, according to the New York Times.

Tornetta has alleged that in April 2017, Musk started to outline the pay deal with Ira Ehrenpreis, a director who headed the board’s compensation committee. The package gave him the right to acquire nearly $50 billion in Tesla shares if the company met certain revenue, profit and share price gain goals.

More than a year after the 2018 Tesla pay deal was put in place, the company’s stock started climbing sharply, going from about $21 to a peak of about $410 in November 2021. It has since fallen by about 50% and now trades at around $190.

Musk also said on Wednesday that he does not want to be the CEO of any company and that his time as the head of Twitter will be temporary.

“I expect to reduce my time at Twitter and find somebody else to run Twitter over time,” he said, according to CNBC.

Musk also said that CEO is not a great description for the work he does.

“At SpaceX it’s really that I’m responsible for the engineering of the rockets and Tesla for the technology in the car that makes it successful,” Musk said. “So, CEO is often viewed as somewhat of a business focused role but in reality, my role is much more that of an engineer developing technology and making sure that we develop breakthrough technologies and that we have a team of incredible engineers who can achieve those goals.”