By Barry Eitel
SAN FRANCISCO (AA) – The world’s largest sovereign wealth fund announced Thursday that it had voted against handing a compensation package valued at $2.6 billion to Tesla chief executive Elon Musk.
Norway’s wealth fund, valued at roughly $1 trillion, said it was part of the minority of Tesla’s shareholders who voted against the payout Wednesday evening. The fund owns a 0.48 percent stake that is worth about $253 million in the electric carmaker. The fund did not comment on the reason for its vote.
Shareholders approved the compensation package for Musk which is connected to Tesla’s valuation over the next decade. It is far above any previous compensation package for an executive at a U.S. company.
Tesla shares slumped Thursday after the deal was announced. The stock closed down 2.35 percent at $309.10.
Tesla said the compensation package is an incentive to push Musk to rapidly grow the company. The goal is to expand the value of Tesla by a factor of 12 – from $54 billion to $650 billion – by 2028.
“If all of these milestones were to be achieved, Tesla will have meaningfully achieved its mission of transitioning the world to sustainable energy and will have become one of the most valuable and successful companies in the world. This is our ambition,” Tesla said of the package in a filing.
If Musk does so, he would be on track to be the richest man in the world due to his own stake in Tesla, which is currently worth $12 billion.
Musk is worth about $20 billion today. He became well-known for co-founding the online payment service PayPal. Along with Tesla, Musk is also the CEO of space exploration company SpaceX and tunnel-drilling firm The Boring Company.
Tesla stock has performed extremely well over the past few years. The stock’s value Thursday is nearly nine times the amount it was worth five years ago.