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Elon Musk, the chief govt and public face of Tesla, is consistently making information and broadcasting his opinions on his social media web site, X. But the electrical automobile firm has one other chief — one who maintains a a lot decrease profile.
For greater than 5 years, Tesla’s board has been led by Robyn M. Denholm, a expertise govt who not often speaks in public outdoors her native Australia and posts barely something on X.
To some analysts and traders, Ms. Denholm is the “grownup within the room” who has helped Mr. Musk flip Tesla into the world’s most precious automaker. But to her critics, she has failed at her most essential job: serving as a test on Mr. Musk.
Late final month, a Delaware judge sharply criticized Ms. Denholm’s management whereas putting down Mr. Musk’s 2018 compensation bundle, which is price greater than $50 billion. Ms. Denholm took a “lackadaisical method to her oversight obligations” at Tesla, stated Chancellor Kathaleen St. J. McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery.
The judge additionally questioned whether or not Ms. Denholm may very well be unbiased from Mr. Musk, as a result of her job on Tesla’s board had earned her greater than $280 million. In courtroom final 12 months, Ms. Denholm described that pay as “life altering.” Her compensation drastically exceeds what different giant U.S. firms like Apple and Alphabet, Google’s father or mother, pay the unbiased chairs on their boards.
“Musk operates as if freed from board oversight,” the judge stated in her ruling.
Mr. Musk has railed towards the ruling, and he stated he deliberate to ask shareholders to authorize Tesla to maneuver its incorporation to Texas, the place the corporate has its headquarters. The courtroom ruling additionally means the board should style a brand new pay bundle for him.
Separately, Mr. Musk demanded final month, two weeks earlier than the Delaware ruling, that Tesla’s board considerably enhance his management over the corporate if it needed him to proceed growing merchandise primarily based on synthetic intelligence at Tesla. Mr. Musk, who owns about 13 p.c of the corporate’s inventory, desires voting rights equal to at the very least 25 p.c of Tesla’s shares.
Ms. Denholm will probably be intently concerned in any resolution to alter the place the corporate is integrated and in negotiations with Mr. Musk over his pay and want for extra management. She has stated nothing publicly about these issues and didn’t reply to a request for an interview.
Ms. Denholm has spent over 40 years in operational and monetary jobs at huge firms in Australia and the United States. She is extensively thought of a peaceful, understated presence with an urge for food for infrequent calculated dangers. As chief monetary officer at Juniper Networks, for instance, she resisted stress from Wall Street to chop prices and lay off workers, defending the corporate’s resolution to put money into analysis and improvement. The technique paid off, some analysts stated.
“She’s very down-to-earth, very straight, very independent-minded, a really relaxed character,” stated Pierre Ferragu, a managing companion at New Street Research who coated Ms. Denholm at Juniper. “I don’t suppose you possibly can have discovered a greater chairman for this very distinctive job” at Tesla.
Perhaps the largest danger she has taken is agreeing to guide Tesla’s board.
Addressing an viewers at an occasion in 2022 in Sydney, Australia, Ms. Denholm stated she had buddies who suggested her to not settle for Mr. Musk’s provide after he agreed to step down as chairman in 2018 as a part of a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The settlement stemmed from Mr. Musk’s declare, on Twitter, that he had secured the funding to take Tesla non-public though his plan to take action was in an embryonic state.
Her buddies had warned her that she could be main the board of an organization “with a contrarian founder, and that on the time was not worthwhile,” Ms. Denholm stated, in response to experiences of the speech. She initially turned Mr. Musk down, in response to authorized filings, however he requested her once more, and she or he agreed and resigned from her job as chief monetary officer at Telstra, an Australian telecommunications firm.
One of three youngsters of European immigrants to Australia, Ms. Denholm, 60, grew up within the suburbs of Sydney, the place she attended what she has described as a “garden-variety public college.” On weekends and through college holidays, she helped her dad and mom steadiness the books and repair vehicles at their fuel station.
Ms. Denholm studied economics on the University of Sydney and began her profession at Arthur Andersen, the accounting agency. She had a collection of jobs at giant firms like Toyota in Australia, the place she was amongst a couple of feminine executives, and Sun Microsystems and Juniper in Silicon Valley.
Besides her place on Tesla’s board, Ms. Denholm serves as chair for the Tech Council of Australia, the nation’s highest-profile expertise trade affiliation. She has owned at the very least three purple Teslas and, in a Sky News interview in 2014, described herself as “genuinely curious.” Her household funding workplace, began in 2021, has a deal with women-led tech start-ups and owns a 30 p.c stake in her hometown’s two basketball groups — the Sydney Kings and Sydney Flames.
Ms. Denholm was not acquainted with Mr. Musk earlier than 2014, when a member of the corporate’s board recruited her, in response to authorized filings. While she has praised Mr. Musk’s imaginative and prescient, self-discipline and resilience in interviews, she has principally prevented discussing him or his erratic feedback on X.
Conor Wynn, an knowledgeable in company decision-making at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, stated Mr. Musk might need chosen Ms. Denholm as a result of she was so totally different from him and had abilities he may not have.
“You don’t need simply the mad genius on the high creating stuff,” Mr. Wynn stated. “You want any person who can translate it into motion, and be people-focused and hold the operations shifting.”
But different consultants stated Ms. Denholm’s job was not simply to enrich Mr. Musk. As the chief of Tesla’s board, she has an obligation to supervise the chief govt and do what’s finest for all the firm’s shareholders.
“When Denholm took over in 2018, it was hoped she could be the grownup within the room, probably even a mom determine who may tame this wild youngster,” stated Jo-Ellen Pozner, affiliate professor of administration on the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University. “That has clearly not occurred.”
But, Ms. Pozner stated, Ms. Denholm could not have been in a position to handle Mr. Musk as a result of nearly all the different Tesla administrators have private or monetary ties to him. One board member is Mr. Musk’s brother, Kimbal. Several others have been near Mr. Musk personally, professionally or each for a few years.
“It doesn’t appear to be she was arrange for fulfillment in reining in Elon Musk,” Ms. Pozner stated.
Ms. Denholm’s job is prone to get more durable this 12 months than it has been. In addition to looming selections in regards to the firm’s incorporation and Mr. Musk’s demand for higher management, Tesla’s inventory is down about 24 p.c this 12 months as a result of traders are anxious about slowing gross sales and slumping earnings.
At a convention final 12 months, Ms. Denholm described how she handled uncertainty and doubt. Early in her profession, confronted with jitters a couple of looming worldwide transfer, Ms. Denholm stated, she referred to as her father for recommendation.
“He stated: ‘Robyn, what’s the worst factor that may occur? You screw up and it’s a must to come dwelling?’” she instructed an viewers in Sydney in May. “I’ve type of taken that method.”
