SpaceX Chief Engineer Elon Musk takes part in a joint news conference with T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert (not pictured) at the SpaceX Starbase, in Brownsville, Texas, U.S., August 25, 2022.
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and finance chief Ned Segal have left the company’s San Francisco headquarters and will not be returning, sources said. Vijaya Gadde, the head of legal policy, trust, and safety was also fired, the Washington Post reported.
Musk had until Friday to complete his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter or face a court battle with the company.
In April, Twitter accepted Musk’s proposal to buy the social media service and take it private. However, Musk soon began sowing doubt about his intentions to follow through with the agreement, alleging that the company failed to adequately disclose the number of spam and fake accounts on the service.
When Musk said he was terminating the deal, Twitter sued the billionaire, alleging he “refuses to honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests.”
In the ensuing months, Twitter and Musk would trade barbs via their attorneys as the two parties were slated to head to Delaware’s Court of Chancery to determine the fate of the company and whether it would end up in the Tesla chief’s hands.
Earlier in October, Musk had a change of heart and said he wanted to pursue his acquisition of Twitter at the original price of $54.20 a share if the social messaging service dropped its litigation. Distrustful of Musk’s motivations, Twitter’s lawyers said that the Tesla CEO’s “proposal is an invitation to further mischief and delay.”
A Delaware Chancery Court judge eventually ruled that Musk had until Oct. 28 to cement the Twitter deal or head to trial.
On Thursday, Musk wrote a message intended to reassure advertisers that social messaging services wouldn’t devolve into “a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!”
“The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence,” Musk said in the message. “There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far-right wing and far left-wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society.”
Musk arrived at the Twitter headquarters earlier this week carrying a sink, and documented the event on Twitter, saying “Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!”
Musk also updated his Twitter description to “Chief Twit.”
Dina Powell McCormick, who was a member of President Donald Trump’s first administration, has resigned from Meta’s board of directors.
Powell McCormick, who previously spent 16 years working at Goldman Sachs, notified Meta of her resignation on Friday, according to a filing with the SEC. The filing did not disclose why McCormick was stepping down from Meta’s board, but said her resignation was effective immediately.
Meta does not plan on replacing her board role, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named due to confidentiality. Powell McCormick is considering a potential strategic advisory role with Meta, but nothing has been decided, the person said.
Powell McCormick joined Meta’s board in April along with Stripe co-founder and CEO Patrick Collison. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement at the time that the two executives “bring a lot of experience supporting businesses and entrepreneurs to our board.”
Powell McCormick served as a deputy national security advisor to President Trump during his first stint in office and was also an assistant secretary of state during President George W. Bush’s administration.
She is married to Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa, who took office in January.
Powell McCormick is the vice chair, president and head of global client services at BDT & MSD Partners, which formed in 2023 after the merchant bank BDT combined with Michael Dell’s investment firm MSD.
With her departure, Meta now has 14 board members, including UFC CEO Dana White, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan and former Enron executive John Arnold.
Elon Musk‘s 2018 CEO pay package from Tesla, worth some $56 billion when it vested, must be restored, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled Friday.
“We reverse the Court of Chancery’s rescission remedy and award $1 in nominal damages,” the judges wrote in their opinion.
In the decision, the Delaware Supreme Court judges said a lower court’s decision to cancel Musk’s 2018 pay plan was too extreme a remedy and that the lower court did not give Tesla a chance to say what a fair compensation ought to be.
The decision on the appeal in this case, known as Tornetta v. Musk, likely ends the yearslong fight over Musk’s record-setting compensation.
Musk’s net worth is currently estimated at around $679.4 billion, according to the Forbes Real Time Billionaires List.
Dorothy Lund, a professor at Columbia Law School, told CNBC that while the Friday opinion may restore the 2018 pay plan for Musk, it leaves the rest of the lower court’s decision unaddressed and intact.
“The court had previously decided that Musk was a controlling shareholder of Tesla and that the Tesla board and he arranged an unfair pay plan for him,” she said. “None of that was reversed in this decision.”
“We are proud to have participated in the historic verdict below, calling to account the Tesla board and its largest stockholder for their breaches of fiduciary duty,” lawyers representing plaintiff Richard J. Tornetta said in an e-mailed statement.
Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Delaware Supreme Court issued the order per curiam with no single judge taking credit for writing the opinion and no dissent noted.
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Musk’s 2018 CEO pay package from Tesla, comprised of 12 milestone-based tranches of stock, was unprecedented at the time it was proposed. After it was granted, the pay plan made Musk the wealthiest individual in the world.
Tesla shareholder Tornetta sued Tesla, filing a derivative action in 2018, accusing Musk and the company’s board of a breach of their fiduciary duties.
Delaware’s business-specialized Court of Chancery decided in January 2024 that the pay plan was improperly granted and ordered it to be rescinded.
In her decision, Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick also found that Musk “controlled Tesla,” and that the process leading to the board’s approval of his 2018 pay plan was “deeply flawed.”
Among other things, she found the Tesla board did not disclose all the material information they should have to investors before asking them to vote on and approve the plan.
After the earlier Tornetta ruling, Musk moved Tesla’s site of incorporation out of Delaware, bashed McCormick by name in posts on his social network X, formerly Twitter, where he has tens of millions of followers, and called for other entrepreneurs to reincorporate outside of the state.
Tesla also attempted to “ratify” the 2018 CEO pay plan by holding a second vote with shareholders in 2024.
In November, Tesla shareholders voted to approve an even larger CEO compensation plan for Musk.
The 2025 pay plan consists of 12 tranches of shares to be granted to the CEO if Tesla hits certain milestones over the next decade and is worth about $1 trillion in total. The new plan could also increase Musk’s voting power over the company from around 13% today to around 25%.
Shareholders had also approved a plan to replace Musk’s 2018 CEO pay if the Tornetta decision was upheld on appeal. That plan is now nullified.
As CNBC previously reported, a law firm that currently represents Tesla in this appeal penned a bill to overhaul corporate law in Delaware earlier this year. The bill was passed by the Delaware legislature in March, and if it had applied retroactively, it could have affected the outcome of this case.
Every weekday, the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer holds a “Morning Meeting” livestream at 10:20 a.m. ET. Here’s a recap of Friday’s key moments. 1. Stocks were higher Friday, led by a rebound in Big Tech as the AI trade attempted to regain momentum. Nvidia stock jumped nearly 3% after Bernstein noted it is trading at 25 times forward earnings, landing it in the eleventh percentile of valuation over the past decade. That’s cheap for the AI chip leader. Market strength carried across the semiconductor group, with Broadcom , AMD , and Micron all charging higher. A stock that did not participate in the rally was Nike . Shares of the sneaker and sportswear maker are down 9.5% a day after it reported solid earnings results but disappointing guidance. 2. Jim also highlighted the standout year for Wells Fargo under CEO Charlie Scharf. “Don’t bet against Charlie,” he said after The Wall Street Journal reported late Thursday that the bank climbed to No. 7 in the U.S. M & A league table, compared to No. 14 last year. The bank advised on high-profile deals, including Netflix ‘s bid for Warner Brothers and Union Pacific ‘s bid for Norfolk Southern . Financial stocks have been on a tear this year, prompting us on Friday to trim our position in Capital One and lock in significant gains. On Thursday, we increased the price target for Capital One to $270 from $250 and downgraded our rating to a 2. In addition, we increased Goldman Sachs ‘ price target to $925 from $850 and Wells Fargo’s price target to $96 from $90. 3. Boeing shares climbed 2.6% on Friday after JPMorgan reiterated the stock as a top pick while increasing its price target to $245 from $240, implying a 15% upside from its current price of $213 per share. Analysts argue the aerospace manufacturer’s path to growth is simple: build more planes and deliver them. While cash flow expectations have come down, JPMorgan believes there’s visibility to at least $10 billion by the end of the decade. Jim said he likes Friday’s stock price for a buy. He called Boeing a “long-term idea” given the strength in travel. 4. Stocks covered in Friday’s rapid fire at the end of the video were: FedEx , Conagra Brands , KB Home , Oracle , and CoreWeave . (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long NVDA, AVGO, WFC, GS, COF, BA. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.