Tesla fans posted. And in recent months, Elon Musk got engaged.
Each time it did, Tesla’s legal team had to get to work, drafting and filing regulatory filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). It’s all part of an effort to say that, this time, when shareholders vote to approve the monster $56 billion compensation package, they were fully informed.
The Delaware judge who struck down the 2018 compensation package in January did so in part because shareholders were not fully informed of the shareholder vote due to inaccurate proxy statements. So in the run-up to that vote — which will be finalized at Thursday’s annual shareholder meeting — Tesla clearly wanted to cover as many bases as possible by oversharing anything Musk has posted or is involved with.
Here they transcribe a 5-minute video from the TeslaBoomerMama video Musk shared on X asking shareholders to vote “yes.”
Here file a video shared by Musk of Andrew Ross Sorkin at Davos from 2018 supporting the initial compensation plan, which was posted by an Anti-Defamation League account says promotes QAnon.
Here is suspension a screenshot of a post of support from Musk’s former divorce lawyer and former Tesla general counsel Todd Maron.
Here In the last week before the vote, they are compiling dozens of screenshots of posts that Musk interacts with in one very long filing.
None of these filings are signed, so it’s unclear who did all this work. Musk has a deep habit of behaving in a way that creates billable hours, so some of this is to be expected. But this push to “revalidate” his compensation package has Tesla’s regulatory team busier than ever.
In terms of just raw filings, Tesla has filed more with the SEC in the past three months than it has at any point in the past five years:
Strip out all the filings related to executives and institutional investors buying and selling stock, as well as all the letters to and from the SEC, and Tesla has filed more than at any time before the 2018 “secured financing” mess :
All of this comes in the context of a relentless push to get out-voted by Tesla’s biggest fans in recent months. They have published countless calls to action, they have coordinated via direct messaging on Musk’s X platform to help shareholders understand how to vote and more.
Tesla and its employees have also joined. The company posted photos of the prototype robot Optimus filling out a voting card. Posted by a pink schedule of the company’s accomplishments since the plan was originally passed in 2018. It even created an entire website dedicated to promoting the shareholder meeting, including a video from Tesla president Robyn Denholm — who, until this recent push, rarely public appearances on behalf of the company.
Many of its top executives voiced their support, including some who have rarely used X. Tesla Vice President of Supply Chain Karn Budhiraj, who has only posted a dozen times on X, He wrote“Elon is the driving force behind Tesla and is critical to the company’s future.”
Tom Zhou, who was recently moved back to China amid Tesla’s biggest restructuring, He wrote that the company has a “huge vision beneath the surface that requires Elon’s wisdom, courage and determination to achieve.” Grace Tao, a senior official who heads communications in China and reportedly runs Tesla relationship with the government there too was posted (on Weibo) about Musk’s “wisdom, courage and determination.”
Few of the company’s employees or supporters really touched on the substance of the judge’s opinion that brought us here: that Musk’s unquestioned dominance of Tesla and the board meant that the process that led to the pay package was inherently unfair.
Still, the effort helped Tesla shareholders reinforce the narrative around the company (and its stock) that Tesla is nothing without Musk and that he deserves the compensation package he filed for. he essentially negotiated with himself. With the fight over Musk’s pay package and reinstatement in Texas likely headed for months of legal challenges, this may be enough of a victory for now.
In fact, it already is celebrating as the votes are being counted.
