New York: In a significant development, the board of American automaker Tesla has agreed to give its CEO Elon Musk another huge pay package worth about US$29 billion.
The company’s latest pay package comes several months after a Delaware court rejected for a second time Musk’s 2018 performance award following a shareholder lawsuit.
Musk is currently appealing the order, reports CNN.
In a letter to shareholders on Monday, Tesla said that Musk has “not received meaningful compensation for eight years” and that its “legal efforts continue” to reinstate the 2018 pay package, adding that there’s “no clear timeline for resolution”.
The package would give Musk 96 million shares of Tesla, each of which trades at just over $300. Musk would have to pay $23.34 for each of those shares, equal to the amount he was expected to pay when he was first awarded his 2018 compensation package.
Musk is not paid a cash salary or bonus for working at Tesla. Rather, Musk, one of the world’s richest people, makes his money through lucrative packages of stock options that allow him to purchase millions of Tesla shares for a fraction of their market price.
Musk is Tesla’s largest individual shareholder — he owns about 13 percent of the company.