Tesla Investors: Elon Musk Is 'Overcommitted,' Needs to Be Reined In
Serving as CEO of Twitter, SpaceX, and Tesla has Elon Musk stretched pretty thin, and Tesla investors are not happy about it.
A group of investors that hold $1.5 billion in shares in the EV maker sent a letter to the Tesla board last week, accusing it of “meager oversight” of Musk and his management at Tesla.
“The board has allowed the CEO to be overcommitted at a time when the company faces critical challenges, including increased competition, regulatory scrutiny, and a stock slide,” the investors wrote in an open letter(Opens in a new window).
Letter signees include 17 groups—such as Amalgamated Bank, United Church Funds, and SOC Investment Group—that tout ethically responsible investments. In their letter, the investors fault Tesla’s board for allowing Musk “to run multiple companies, leading to an inability to address the multiple strategic and competitive issues facing Tesla.”
“Meanwhile, Tesla is increasingly losing market share in the high-performance EV market as legacy automakers launch comparable EV models at similar or lower price points,” the letter says. Other challenges cited include various lawsuits and regulatory probes facing Tesla, along with accusations of poor labor practices.
As a result, investors are urging Tesla’s board to rein Musk in. This could include enacting a policy that limits his "outside commitments or a CEO succession plan.”
However, Amalgamated Bank tells(Opens in a new window) CNN it isn’t necessarily calling for Musk’s ouster. Rather, the larger problem is Tesla’s board failing to maintain independence to oversee Musk’s decisions at the EV maker. “Due to the board’s failure to restrict the CEO’s outside commitments and ensure he is focused on solving the many challenges the company
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