Can Robyn Denholm Stand Up To Elon Musk And Nonetheless Stay In Her Place At Tesla?

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Final Up to date on: 4th Could 2025, 09:19 am

Tesla board of administrators chair Robyn Denholm insists that the Wall Road Journal report claiming that Tesla started a seek for a brand new CEO is fake. Why would the Tesla board pursue changing its CEO, Elon Musk? He introduced the corporate from fledgling standing to just about the highest of world electrical automobile gross sales. His imaginative and prescient and innovation are unequalled in automotive manufacturing.

But a spokesperson for the WSJ says the newspaper is standing by its report. In March, they’ve realized, Tesla board members contacted government placement corporations in a quest to switch Musk.

Denholm has refuted the declare, saying on X on Thursday that the WSJ report was “completely false.” (In fact, X is the social media web site owned by Musk.) “The CEO of Tesla is Elon Musk, and the board is extremely assured in his capacity to proceed executing on the thrilling development plan forward,” Denholm wrote.

Is there greater than meets the attention behind the scenes at Tesla that accounts for these contradictory media tales?

Reaching the C-suite is often considered because the consummate aim for girls. But breaking the proverbial glass wall of enterprise is usually depicted as a binary: ladies both make it, or they don’t. Nevertheless, boundaries when on the high — typically delicate, typically not — can stop ladies from performing authentically as soon as they’ve reached the head.

Is Robyn Denholm within the unenviable place of alleviating Musk’s ego with the intention to maintain onto her place at Tesla and to show round this sample of downward traits?

A number of causes are actually hurting Tesla gross sales and inventory worth.

• Elon Musk’s political actions appear to be impacting the Tesla model.
• Tesla’s restricted and fairly outdated lineup is making it much less and fewer aggressive.
• Beforehand owned Tesla automobiles have misplaced a great deal of their trade-in worth.
• The EV competitors has soared, providing shoppers many extra fashions and worth ranges from which to decide on.

How a lot is Denholm accountable for failing to carry a agency hand to Musk?

Hassle at Tesla: Fleeting, or are Systemic Flaws Rising?

As soon as upon a time, a key governance determination for Tesla was to “compensate Tesla’s CEO provided that different shareholders understand large worth.” Musk threatened to depart his position at Tesla final yr if he didn’t obtain the compensation bundle he demanded. It’s necessary to recall that in January 2024 Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick in Delaware invalidated Musk’s compensation bundle. In her ruling, she wrote, “Swept up by the rhetoric of ‘all upside,’ or maybe starry-eyed by Musk’s celebrity attraction, the board by no means requested the $55.8 billion query — Was the plan even mandatory for Tesla to retain Musk and obtain its targets?”

The corporate has not seen any reduction since Musk was placated with this pay bundle.

Tesla has skilled a 71% drop in quarterly revenue, and Musk, realizing that his absence has compromised the corporate’s viability, has agreed to spend just one or two days every week transferring ahead to help the Trump administration. He has pledged to dedicate the rest of his week to Tesla.

In fact, Musk is the CEO of a number of different firms which are additionally stagnant or struggling. They clearly want his consideration, too.

Two months after the Trump 2.0 inauguration, with Elon Musk deeply entrenched in his Division of Authorities (In)Effectivity position, CleanTechnica senior author Steve Hanley requested, “What obligation — if any — does the chair of the board of administrators of a publicly traded firm need to touch upon the actions of the company’s largest stockholder and CEO?” Within the article headline, Steve (who was appraised of this text earlier than it went to press) said that Denholm had determined “to dummy up when requested about Elon Musk.”

“Dummy” has a number of definitions. Whereas it may well imply pretense, it may well additionally connote a scarcity of intelligence.

Company is a fluid assemble. Positive, private philosophy and self-determination are highly effective components in ladies’s rise to management roles. Nevertheless, male-dominated tradition on the high of the pyramid impedes ladies’s company — even a longtime chief like Denholm.

She’s no dummy — however she additionally hasn’t spoken out about Musk as so many individuals have hoped. Has she been compromised at Tesla?

Girls and the C-Suite

A 2024 S&P report revealed that solely 9% of CEOs within the largest US firms are ladies. There are 74% fewer ladies executives in management groups than there are within the US inhabitants. The S&P report additionally supplied illumination about what typically occurs when ladies are promoted to excessive ranges of management.

“Gender range in government management means extra than simply equal illustration of women and men throughout C-suites. Organizations should additionally make sure that ladies introduced into government management roles additionally acquire a way of belonging and see the direct impacts of their contributions to the group’s success.”

The chief abstract affords steering that corporations with extra ladies in senior positions “are extra worthwhile, extra socially accountable, and supply safer, higher-quality buyer experiences.”

Every company has its personal social construction — common and acquainted patterns of cultural behaviors like shared beliefs, values, symbols, and targets. Girls who attain the best ranges of management have negotiated what Eagly and Carli write within the Harvard Enterprise Evaluate as “labyrinthine preparations that current numerous sorts of obstructions.” Organizational practices are transmitted from one management staff to a different, and good relationships between excessive degree gamers yield social acceptance.

So, so as to not be perceived as a gatecrasher, has Denholm needed to acquiesce to not solely the male-dominated higher echelon but in addition its unwavering worship of Musk as all-mighty? Eagly and Carli counsel that many ladies in management roles “determine facets of a masculine tradition and accommodate to it.”

Furthermore, an entire lot of proof concludes that some ladies are positioned, extra typically than comparable males, in extremely dangerous management positions. It could not be exhausting to argue that billionaire Musk, the world’s richest individual, is a pressure with which most individuals couldn’t reckon and that Denholm has been doomed to fail since taking the Tesla helm.

Broad, downward modifications within the US economic system, pushed by the Trump–Musk staff, could possibly be offering Denholm the information to rejuvenate Tesla. Will she — an individual who has overtly said that her Tesla inventory has been “life altering” — buck Musk and be the image of inside Tesla disruption?

Who’s Robyn Denholm, Anyway?

Robyn M. Denholm has been chair of the Tesla board since 2018. Her management expertise is just not restricted to Tesla. Since 2021, she has been an working companion of a enterprise capital agency. She’s variously been CFO of each a telecommunications firm and a networking gear firm. Her expertise with expertise contains numerous government roles at Solar Microsystems. Her monetary background contains pretty lengthy stints at Toyota Motor Company Australia and at Arthur Andersen & Firm.

Denholm’s remuneration with Tesla is pre-arranged in order to present her the pliability to train fairness choices, and she or he has executed so robustly. Denholm offered 112,390 shares price $35 million simply weeks after Tesla inventory worth rose post-Trump re-election. She offered the identical quantity of inventory once more on December 2, February 3, March 3, and on the finish of April. These gross sales have amounted to $558 million price of inventory since 2020, based on information compiled by Bloomberg.

Sure, completely: this fortune has been “life-changing” for Denholm (as it might be for many of us). She and different Tesla board members maintain about $1.63 billion price of shares and choices. Is that this low-profile board able to make the break with Musk — with Denholm main the way in which?