Norway Wealth Fund Votes No on Musk's $1 Trillion Award

Watch Norway Wealth Fund Votes No on Musk's $1 Trillion Award - Bloomberg on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00We're trying to tabulate and tally who's voted no so far ahead of November 6th. Norway's sovereign

00:07wealth fund is the ninth largest Tesla shareholder, I believe, hence why we're saying this is the

00:13biggest no vote so far. Yeah, that's right. And they were pretty diplomatic about it. They praised

00:19the value that Musk has created over the years. They refer to him as having played a visionary

00:26role. And yet they're concerned just about this sort of magnitude of this award about dilution and

00:33also about the issue of sort of key man risk. This is something that has been has come up time and

00:39again with Musk. You know, the moment that he has had someone who's emerged as sort of, you know,

00:46who sort of looks like a number two, that person doesn't seem to last very long. So in Tesla's

00:52defense, I think the board has tried to take some steps with this package to try and mitigate some

00:58of that risk and sort of have Musk play a role in in, you know, succession. But the planning for that

01:06still seems to be, you know, pretty much, you know, sort of to the side as they really sort of focus as a

01:13board on retaining him and on incentivizing him. Can you take us to how they have voted in prior votes

01:22on pay for Tesla or the relationship between the Norwegian wealth fund and Elon Musk going forward?

01:28What that means for, well, really the retail base, which is the big push here for many.

01:34Yeah, I think as much as this no vote is concerning, if you want to see this measure pass, you know,

01:40we only have to go back to last year to an example of when this fund voted against a Musk pay package.

01:47This was the vote on re-ratifying the 2018 award that a judge in Delaware threw out.

01:54And there's kind of a juicy story to that in that the CEO of this wealth fund, you know, kind of got raked

02:01over the coals by Musk. We found out later for the way that the fund voted on that pay package.

02:07There was a freedom of information request for messages between the head of the fund, Nikolai Tengen and Elon Musk.

02:16And Musk, you know, referred to this notion that he needed to, quote, make amends for the way that the fund voted.

02:23So there is a backstory here. And as much as, you know, this is maybe a negative signal, again, if you want this to pass,

02:30we've seen that it's been the case that even when this fund has opposed a measure that the board has wanted to see through,

02:38the board has managed to get its way with its, you know, in part thanks to its very substantial retail investor base.