SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 16 (Reuters) – James Murdoch, CEO of Tesla Inc. (TSLA.O) The director testified in court Wednesday that CEO Elon Musk has been identifying a potential successor to lead the electric car maker for the past several months.
Murdoch, who has not named a potential successor, was testifying in a lawsuit over Musk’s 2018 Tesla pay package.
When the plaintiff’s lawyer asked him to confirm that Musk had never named anyone as a potential successor CEO, Murdoch said, “He really has,” adding that it happened “in the last few months.”
There are some Tesla investors worried That Musk can properly focus on his role as CEO of the world’s most valuable automaker as he runs Twitter Inc. after a long-term buyout. Murdoch testified that Musk had some Tesla engineers working on Twitter, and that the board was monitoring the situation.
Murdoch’s statement did not reveal the specifics of the succession talk. Antonio Gracias, a longtime friend of Musk’s who served on Tesla’s board from 2007 to 2021, said talks are underway to find an “administrative executive” to oversee sales, finance and human resources so Musk can focus his time on the core product. officer is his most vital function. But he added that they could not find one without informing about the time of the discussions.
“Frankly, I don’t want to be the CEO of any company,” said Musk, CEO of Twitter and the Space X rocket company, among others.
Musk said he expected it Reduce your time on Twitter and finally, find a new leader to run the social media company.
On Monday, Musk said he was working through the night at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters and would continue to “work and sleep here” until the social media platform he recently bought for $44 billion is fixed.
“AS LONG AS IT CAN BE USEFUL”
Tesla investor Gene Muster tweeted after the news: “It’s important to note that there is a gap of a year between someone being identified and someone taking the job.”
At Tesla’s shareholders meeting in August, Musk was asked about his succession plan and replied: “I intend to stay with Tesla as long as I can be useful.”
At the time, Musk said, “We have a very talented team here. So even if I get abducted by aliens or maybe even come back to my home planet, Tesla will continue to do very well.”
Murdoch said that Tesla’s audit committee is monitoring the situation on Twitter, and that the committee is discussing whether some Tesla engineers are working on Twitter.
“Most of the work I understand has been done. It was a short-term deployment,” he said, adding that the work “paid.”
“The review committee said if this is taking away from the Tesla business, that’s something we should be very aware of, and we don’t want that to happen.”
He also said Musk asked several of his team leaders to see if they would be interested in helping Twitter.
Musk acknowledged in his testimony that some Tesla engineers helped evaluate Twitter’s engineering teams, but he said it was “on a voluntary basis” and was done “after hours.”
Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin, Paresh Dave and Tom Hals; Edited by Jonathan Oatis, Deepa Babington, and David Gregorio
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