Tesla named Oracle Corp co-founder Larry Ellison, a shareholder and a close friend of Chief Executive Elon Musk, to Tesla’s board to provide the independent oversight demanded by U.S. regulators.
Also joining the board is Kathleen Wilson-Thompson, global head of HR at Walgreens.
After Elon Musk posted an inaccurate and ill-advised tweet saying he was planning to take Tesla private and had the funding to do so, Tesla had an agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which sued the company.
The agreement required that Tesla name a new chair to replace Musk, and add two independent directors to the board. Appointing Larry Ellison, a close friend of Elon Musk fulfills the letter but not the spirit of the agreement.
However, the inclusion of Ellison puts one of the world’s richest people with experience building a startup into a successful company on Tesla’s board.
In early November, Tesla named Robyn Denholm as its new chairman because Tesla was required to name a new chairman of the board of directors in place of Musk, who was banned from the position for three years.
Tesla’s new chair Robyn Denholm lives in Australia, where she is CFO of the country’s largest telecom company. Consequently, she won’t move to California, or at least not anytime in the near future. The SEC wanted the new chair to oversee Musk, which under current circumstances doesn’t seem possible. Tesla has now met both those conditions, though maybe not the way the SEC wished.
In the recent past, Tesla’s board has been viewed by critics as weak and stacked with members who have close ties to Mr. Musk. The new additions to the board put a bookend on a months-long distraction that at one point looked like it may cost Elon Musk his future with the company.
The SEC has not yet publicly commented on the choice of new directors. But the markets seem to approve. Tesla shares jumped by 10% in the 24 hours following the news, taking them to over $330.
