JB Strobel, former chief technology officer of Tesla Motors, cuts the ribbon for the new Supercharger Station outside the Tesla Factory in Fremont, Calif., August 16, 2013.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Tesla It has named JB Straubel, CEO and founder of e-waste recycler Redwood Materials, to its eight-member board of directors, according to the company. SEC filing out Thursday. Straubel founded a recycling venture in Carson City, Nevada in 2017 while still serving as his CTO at Tesla, and left Tesla in 2019 to focus on it.
Straubel is considered a co-founder of Tesla due to his early engineering and operational leadership at Tesla. Elon Straubel, who he joined in 2004, long before Musk became his CEO, oversaw the construction of Tesla’s first battery factory outside of Reno, among others.
If he wins the shareholder vote, Straubel will succeed current Tesla director Hiromichi Mizuno, who does not plan to run for re-election at the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting scheduled for May 16.
Mizuno was formerly the Chief Investment Officer of Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund and has been a member of Tesla’s Board of Directors since April 2020. Mizuno is a member of Tesla’s Audit Committee.
In addition to Straubel, Tesla plans to re-elect CEO Elon Musk and Chairman Robyn Denholm to its board again.
According to its annual report, Tesla is asking investors to recertify PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) as its auditor and vote on two different executive compensation-related issues.
Only one vote proposal submitted by a shareholder will be considered for voting in May. Shareholders should expect Tesla to provide investors with a “Key Person Risk” report that identifies how the company will react if a key person leaves the company for any reason, from retirement to premature death or disability. I suggested.
Of particular concern is Tesla’s reliance on CEO Elon Musk. The company has repeatedly said in its financial statements that it is “extremely dependent on” Mr. Musk’s services.
Since last fall, many Tesla investors have criticized Musk’s decision to sell billions of dollars worth of Tesla shares to lead the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. Musk became CEO of the social media platform and allowed high-ranking Tesla employees to work with him.
Tesla director James Murdoch testified in court that Musk had secretly discussed a potential successor to lead the electric car business. looking for.
A 2018 Morgan Stanley report found that 59 S&P 500 CEOs left companies in 2017 and those companies underperformed the market by 11% in the following 12 months. indicated.”
Tesla’s board of directors is asking shareholders to vote against a key person’s risk report. They opposed the proposal, and disclosed shareholder-requested disclosures, such as identifying the executives most important to Tesla’s long-term success and who might replace them, to tell competitors “from Tesla.” “We will encourage them to target and recruit distant high-value executives,” he said.
