Tesla names new board chair

Tesla has named a new chair of its board of directors to replace Elon Musk, as required by a settlement the company reached with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Robyn Denholm, who became Tesla's first female board director in 2014 and had headed the board's audit committee, will quit her job as chief financial officer and head of strategy at Australia telecom giant Telstra and within six months will focus full time on the chairman position at the Silicon Valley electric-car maker.

"I believe in this company, I believe in its mission and I look forward to helping Elon and the Tesla team achieve sustainable profitability and drive long-term shareholder value," Denholm said in a statement late Wednesday.

Denholm's experience includes executive positions at Juniper Networks and Sun Microsystems, and finance work at Toyota in Australia.

"I look forward to working even more closely with Robyn as we continue accelerating the advent of sustainable energy," Musk said in Wednesday's announcement.

Under the SEC settlement, Musk had to step down as chairman but keep his CEO position, and Tesla was to name a new chairman of the board and appoint two new independent directors. It has not yet announced the two new directors.

In addition, Tesla and Musk were ordered to pay $20 million each as part of the settlement over Musk's failed takeprivate plan. In August, he tweeted that he had secured funding to take Tesla private. A couple of weeks later, it turned out that was not true, and the SEC accused him of misleading investors.