Tesla is looking for a manager to handle Elon Musk
Wanted: A seasoned executive with a steady hand, a passion for electric cars and the mettle to rein in a CEO with itchy Twitter fingers.
That’s pretty much the job posting Tesla agreed to as part of the settlement nine days ago with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which requires the company to appoint an independent chairman to replace Elon Musk and add two directors to the board. Names being floated as candidates for the chairmanship have ranged from former Vice President Al Gore to one-time CEOs, including Jim McNerney of Boeing and Alan Mulally of Ford Motor.
What shareholders want, of course, is someone who can put Tesla on the path to profitability and also manage Musk, whose tweets about having secured the funding and investor support to take the company private was what got him into hot water with the SEC — and who, not incidentally, was busy on Twitter last week taunting the agency. The Sept 29 settlement will keep him out of the top board seat for three years. This is what some institutional investors have long been calling for, contending that the board has failed to sufficiently govern the chief executive officer and that Musk may be stretched too thin, running Tesla as well as the rocket manufacturer SpaceX, where he’s also both CEO and chairman.
“The SEC settlement is a moment for the board and the company to take a deep breath and rethink,” said Dieter Waizenegger, executive director of Ctw Investment Group, which works with union pension funds. “This board really needs to evolve — it needs more women and more people of color. It’s a very insular board.”
At the moment, six of the nine directors are white males and all but three have connections to or investments in one or more of the companies Musk controls. The SEC settlement requires that the two additional directors be independent.