Tesla shareholders have voted to restore CEO Elon Musk's record $44.9 billion pay package that was thrown out by a Delaware judge earlier this year. Vote totals were not immediately announced. The favorable vote doesn't mean CEO Musk will get the all-stock compensation anytime soon. The package is likely to remain tied up in the Delaware Chancery Court for months as Tesla appeals the rejection. The court ruled in January that Musk essentially controlled the Tesla board when it approved the package in 2018, and that it failed to fully inform shareholders who approved it the same year. Tesla has said it would appeal, but asked shareholders to reapprove the package at Thursday's annual meeting.
Elon Musk was alternately depicted in a San Francisco courtroom as a liar who callously jeopardized the savings of "regular people" or a well-intentioned visionary. Those descriptions emerged Wednesday in opening statements at a trial focused on a Tesla buyout that never happened. Lawyers on opposing sides drew the starkly different portraits of Musk for the nine-person jury that will hear the three-week trial. The case is focused on two August 2018 tweets that the billionaire posted on the Twitter service that he now owns. The tweets indicated that Musk had lined up the financing to take Tesla private at a time when the automaker's stock was slumping amid production problems.
Apple CEO Tim Cook will take a more than 40% pay cut this year from a year earlier as the company adjusts how it calculates his compensation. Apple Inc. said in a regulatory filing that Cook's target total compensation is $49 million for 2023. Last year the company conducted a shareholder vote on executive pay. Apple said its compensation committee took into account shareholder feedback, the company's performance and a recommendation from Cook, who was promoted to CEO in 2011, to adjust his compensation in light of the feedback received.
Tesla says it sold a record 1.3 million electric vehicles last year. But the number fell short of CEO Elon Musk's pledge to grow the company's sales by 50% nearly every year. The figure topped the prior record of 936,000 vehicles delivered in 2021. But it was shy of the 1.4 million needed to reach the company's 50% growth target. Sales grew 40% year over year, while production climbed 47% to 1.37 million.
