Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package gets rejected — again

A Delaware Judge found that Musk’s shareholder vote wasn’t enough to award him his hefty compensation plan.

by Emma Roth

Dec 2, 2024, 11:11 PM UTC

Photo illustration of Elon Musk surrounded by raining dollar bills.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

Emma Roth is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package was struck down once again. In a ruling on Monday, Delaware Chancery Court Judge Kathaleen St. J. McCormick upheld her decision to block the compensation plan over concerns about conflicts of interest following its approval in 2018.

After warning shareholders in June that Musk could leave the company if his pay package isn’t approved, Tesla held a vote in hopes of reversing the judge’s decision. Shareholders voted to approve the hefty compensation, but this still wasn’t enough to convince the judge to reinstate it.

The decision states that Musk has “no procedural ground for flipping the outcome of an adverse posttrial decision based on evidence they created after trial.” It also calls claims that shareholders can change the outcome of a court decision “dubious generally and unquestionably false” in this scenario.

Judge McCormick granted $345 million to the lawyers representing the Tesla shareholders who sued over the $56 billion plan. Musk is expected to appeal the decision.

Even without the package, Musk still remains the richest man in the world, and Tesla stocks continue to soar following Donald Trump’s win in the US Presidential Election.

Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.