Shares for sale, the golden bargains of Tesla's president
In the last six months alone, Robyn Denholm is said to have sold Tesla securities worth around $198 million. Meanwhile Tesla collects EU funds
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In March, as Tesla's shares plummeted and the company navigated troubled waters, Elon Musk exhorted his employees to hang on: 'Don't sell your shares'. But Robyn Denholm, chairman of the board of directors, had taken a different tack. According to an investigation by the New York Times, in the last six months alone she has allegedly sold about $198 million worth of Tesla stock, bringing to more than $530 million the accumulated gains through stock sales since she joined the board in 2014.
Stock options resold by the pound
.This behaviour raises more than one eyebrow, not only because of the timing, but also because Denholm took advantage of stock options received as part-time compensation, bought at $24 and resold at over $270. A golden bargain, just as the ship was starting to take on water: declining deliveries, quarterly profits at their lowest for four years, and an increasingly polarised corporate image. Sales, formally planned in advance, intensified at the worst possible time.
Tesla's board, already criticised by investors and judges for leaving Musk too much room to manoeuvre, is thus once again at the centre of the storm. Denholm, in particular, was branded 'negligent' by Delaware judge Kathaleen McCormick in the ruling that overturned the 56 billion mega compensation awarded to Musk in 2018.
Incidentally, Denholm himself, in early May, when Musk declared that he had decided to take back the operational leadership after his long political interlude (which cost Tesla dearly in terms of reputation and sales), had come under fire from the Wall Street Journal, according to which he had been working to find a successor to Musk. A hypothesis officially denied.
Funds from the European Union for the charging network
.But while Tesla's governance shows obvious contradictions, on the other side of the world Brussels continues to support the group. In response to a question from MEP Daniel Freund, Commissioner Piotr Serafin confirmed that in 2023 Tesla received around EUR 150 million through the Connecting Europe Facility programme for electric charging projects on the TEN-T network. The funds were allocated to Tesla Motors Netherlands BV, with three grants for the development of infrastructure for long-distance vehicles.
