{"id":82387,"date":"2025-05-14T10:59:31","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T14:59:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=82387"},"modified":"2025-05-14T10:59:31","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T14:59:31","slug":"teslas-robyn-denholm-made-5x-more-than-next-best-paid-chair-a-role-musk-said-was-usefuless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=82387","title":{"rendered":"Tesla’s Robyn Denholm made 5x more than next best-paid chair, a role Musk said was useless"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\"\"<\/figure>\n

Robyn Denholm, Tesla\u2019s chairwoman, made five times more money than the next best-paid board chair, a role Tesla\u2019s CEO Elon Musk said was useless.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In 2018, Musk settled with the SEC for falsely claiming he had secured funding to take Tesla private at $420 a share, he was forced to resign as chair of Tesla\u2019s board.<\/p>\n

Musk basically handpicked Robyn Denholm to become the new chair, which he then called a useless \u201chonorific\u201d titled:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cChairman\u2019 is an honorific, not executive role, which means it\u2019s not needed to run Tesla. Will retire that title at Tesla in 3 years.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Denholm made a lot of money in this useless honorific role.<\/p>\n

\tAdvertisement – scroll for more content<\/span><\/p>\n

She has made over $530 million, almost entirely through stock option compensation, since becoming Tesla\u2019s chairperson.<\/p>\n

Most of her stock sales happened over the last year:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

The New York Times released a new report looking into Denholm\u2019s compensation and found that she was paid about 5 times more than the next best-paid nonexecutive chair.<\/p>\n

Tesla paid its chair about 5 times more than UnitedHealth\u2019s:<\/p>\n

\n

The nonexecutive chair with the next-highest profit from selling shares in the company he oversees was Stephen Hemsley of UnitedHealth Group. Mr. Hemsley has earned more than $100 million from the sale of UnitedHealth shares since November 2018, though he received all of that stock while he was chief executive of the health care company.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

To Musk\u2019s point about the role being honorific, it\u2019s not clear what Denholm accomplished during her time as chair.<\/p>\n

She and the rest of Tesla\u2019s board oversee Tesla\u2019s executive management, led by Musk, but Musk has been allowed to do whatever he wants for years.<\/p>\n

They have backed his every move, granted him\u00a0a $55 billion CEO compensation package<\/a>, and remained silent when\u00a0he threatened Tesla shareholders that he would not develop AI products at Tesla<\/a>\u00a0unless given a larger, more controlling share of the company, or decided to\u00a0fire Tesla\u2019s entire charging team to make an example out of the head of the team<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Most recently, they have not addressed\u00a0the protests at Tesla stores and product boycotts<\/a>, which are attributed to Musk\u2019s involvement in politics, angering a significant portion of the population and Tesla\u2019s consumer base.<\/p>\n

Only recently was there a report suggesting the board floated the idea of replacing Musk to gain leverage in forcing him to spend more time at Tesla. Even then, the board quickly denied the report<\/a>, which only claimed that they were doing their jobs in planning the CEO succession.<\/p>\n

Electrek\u2019s Take<\/h2>\n

Based on Musk\u2019s comment, Denholm was paid half a billion dollars to do nothing. That\u2019s literally all that was required of her after replacing Musk as chair of the board: nothing.<\/p>\n

Musk is in charge. She is just an \u201chonorific\u201d figurehead that is required to back his every move.<\/p>\n

Just as Tesla\u2019s then-third-largest individual shareholder, after Musk, Leo KoGuan, told\u00a0Electrek<\/em>\u00a0last year, when\u00a0he couldn\u2019t get his concerns about Musk heard by the board<\/a>, Tesla is \u201ca family business masquerading as a public company.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links.<\/em> More.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robyn Denholm, Tesla\u2019s chairwoman, made five times more money than the next best-paid board chair, a role Tesla\u2019s CEO Elon Musk said was useless. In 2018, Musk settled with the SEC for falsely claiming he had secured funding to take Tesla private at $420 a share, he was forced to resign as chair of Tesla\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8313,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-e-cars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}