Curious what will happen to the court case. Can a court control a company against the repeated votes of share holders?
Tesla’s second-largest shareholder, Vanguard, voted against the pay deal in 2018. BlackRock, the third largest, voted for it. Both declined to say how they were voting this time.Did Vanguard officially stated that they have "significant amount of trust in Musk"? They are not Cathy Woods.
Can a shareholder vote overturn a court decision? No. So what is the practical impact here? It doesn't change a board without outsiders, which was one problem with the pay package. It doesn't retrofit an arms-length negotiation, which was another problem. This isn't a new incentive agreement because crafting a replacement with the same outcome and same tax impacts is not possible. As far as I can tell Elon can't collect on the incentives, which also means shareholders take no hit on dilution, yet.
But Vanguard, which has total assets of about $9 trillion, and other big index fund managers were always likely to be key to the vote. Representatives of Vanguard rivals BlackRock (BLK.N), and State Street (STT.N), declined to comment about their votes on Thursday.