Elon Musk is already the world’s richest man, but today he could take a giant step towards becoming the world’s first trillionaire.

Shareholders at Tesla are voting on a pay deal for their chief executive that is unlike anything corporate America has ever seen.

The package would grant Musk, who already has a net worth of more than $400bn, around 425 million shares in the company.

That would net him about $1trn (£760bn) and, perhaps more importantly to Musk, it would tighten his grip on the company by raising his stake from 15% to almost 30%.

The board, which has been making its case to retail investors with a series of videos and digital ads, has a simple message: Tesla is at a turning point.

Yes, it wants to sell millions of cars, but it also wants to be a pioneer in robotaxis, AI-driven humanoid robots, and autonomous driving software. At this moment, it needs its visionary leader motivated and fully on board.

Musk has served his warning shot. Late last month, he wrote on X: “Tesla is worth more than all other automotive companies combined. Which of those CEOs would you like to run Tesla? It won’t be me.”

Not everyone is buying it, however.

With so much of his personal wealth tied up in Tesla, would Musk really walk away?

Bad for the brand?

Others see his continued presence and rising influence as a risk. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, which owns 1.1% of the company (making it a top 10 shareholder), has already declared it will vote against the deal. It cited concerns about “the award’s size, dilution, and lack of mitigation of key person risk”.

Several major US pension funds have followed suit. In an open letter published last month, they warned: “The board’s relentless pursuit of keeping its chief executive has damaged Tesla’s reputation.”

They also criticised the board for allowing Musk to pursue other ventures. They said he was overcommitted and distracted as a result. Signatories of that letter included the state treasurers of Nevada, New Mexico, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Colorado, and the comptrollers of Maryland and New York City.

All of them Democrats. Republicans have been more favourable. There is a political slant to this.

The signatories’ concerns with his “other ventures” no doubt include the time Musk spent dabbling in right-wing politics with the Republican inner circle. That made him a polarising figure and, to an extent, Tesla too.

Pay packet dwarfs rivals

Combine this with a mixed sales performance and a volatile share price, and some are wondering whether the carmaker has lost its way under his leadership.

Irrespective of performance, for some, the existence of billionaires – let alone trillionaires – can never be justified. Some may also ask why Musk is worth so much more than the leaders of Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft, or Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company by market capitalisation.

Nvidia‘s chief executive, Jensen Huang, received $49.9m (£37.9m) this fiscal year. So, how has Tesla come up with these numbers? Why is Musk’s pay so out of kilter with the benchmark? Does the company have a corporate governance problem?

The courts have suggested it might. Last year, a Delaware court took the view that Tesla’s board members, which include Musk’s brother Kimbal, were not fully independent when agreeing to a $56bn (£42.6bn) pay packet back in 2017.

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The Delaware Supreme Court is now reviewing the case. It is a reminder that even if Musk meets his targets, a similar fate could befall the current package.

The Tesla board is holding firm, however. Robyn Denholm, the company’s chair, told The New York Times: “He doesn’t get any compensation if he doesn’t deliver,” adding that Musk “does things that further humankind”.

Tesla’s valuation is tied up in its promise to deliver revolutionary AI and robotics products that will change the world. Those ambitions, which include robots that can look after children, are lofty. Some would call them unrealistic, but the board is adamant that if they are to become a reality, only Musk can make it happen.

Under the deal, Musk would receive no salary or cash bonus. Instead, he would collect shares as Tesla’s value grows. To unlock the full package, he would have to increase the current market valuation six times to $8.5trn (£6.47trn). For context, that’s almost twice that of Nvidia.

There are other hurdles. The company would have to sell 20 million additional electric vehicles, achieve 10 million subscriptions to its self-driving software on average over three months, deploy one million robotaxis on average over the same period, sell one million AI-powered robots, and boost adjusted earnings 24-fold to $400bn (£304bn).

They are ambitious targets, but Musk has defied the sceptics before.

The cyber attack on high street department store Marks and Spencer is expected to directly cost roughly £136m.

The figure is only the cost of immediate incident systems response and recovery, as well as specialist legal and professional services support.

Combined with a loss in sales, as the retailer’s online systems were out of action from Easter into the summer, statutory profit before tax at the business has been nearly wiped out for the first half of the year.

This profit measure dropped from £391.9m last year to £3.4m this year. Statutory profit before tax is the official profit figure reported in a company’s financial statements before it paid tax, used for tax and legal purposes.

About £100m is being claimed back in insurance for the cyberattack, M&S said in its market update.

Using a different profit measure – the M&S group’s adjusted profit before tax – the figure is more than half that of a year earlier, down from £413m to £184m.

Sales were hit as online shopping was unavailable from the April attack date until June. Some shelves were also empty in the days after the attack.

Ransomware hackers broke into M&S systems by tricking employees at a third-party contractor.

The attack was just one of a series that struck major British businesses.

The Co-Op, Jaguar Land Rover and Harrods all had operations interrupted by cyber criminals.

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Sir Alan Bates has reached a seven-figure deal to settle his claim over the Post Office Horizon scandal, more than 20 years after he began campaigning over what turned into one of Britain’s biggest miscarriages of justice.

Sky News has learnt that the government has agreed a deal with the former sub-postmaster after handing him what he described as a “take it or leave it” offer during the spring.

Sir Alan has previously said publicly that that proposal amounted to 49.2% of his original claim.

One source suggested that his final settlement may have been worth between £4m and £5m, implying that Sir Alan’s claim could have been in the region of £10m, although those figures could not be corroborated on Tuesday morning.

A government spokesperson said: “We pay tribute to Sir Alan Bates for his long record of campaigning on behalf of victims and have now paid out over £1.2bn to more than 9,000 victims.

“We can confirm that Sir Alan’s claim has reached the end of the scheme process and been settled.”

Sky News has attempted to reach Sir Alan for comment about the settlement of his claim.

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Sir Alan led efforts over many years to prove that the Horizon software system supplied by Fujitsu, the Japanese technology company, was faulty.

Hundreds of sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted between 1999 and 2015, with scores of people either ending their own lives or making attempts to do so.

However, it was only after ITV turned their fight for justice into a drama, Mr Bates Vs The Post Office, that the government accelerated plans to deliver redress to victims.

Even so, the compensation scheme set up to administer redress has been mired in controversy.

Writing in The Sunday Times in May, Sir Alan described the process as “quasi-kangaroo courts in which the Department for Business and Trade sits in judgement of the claims and alters the goalposts as and when it chooses”.

“Claims are, and have been, knocked back on the basis that legally you would not be able to make them, or that the parameters of the scheme do not extend to certain items.”

Sir Alan had previously been made compensation offers worth just one-sixth of his claim – which he had labelled “derisory”, with a second offer amounting to a third of the sum he was seeking.

Sir Ross Cranston, a former High Court judge, adjudicates on cases where a claimant disputes a compensation offer from the government and then objects to the results of a review by an independent panel.

In 2017, Sir Alan and a group of 555 sub-postmasters sued the Post Office in the High Court, ultimately winning a £58m settlement.

However, swingeing legal fees left the group with just £12m of that sum, prompting ministers to establish a separate compensation scheme amid a growing outcry.

A significant number of other sub-postmasters have also complained publicly about the pace, and outcome, of the compensation process.

The first volume of Sir Wyn Williams’s public inquiry into the Horizon scandal was published in July, and concluded that at least 13 people may have taken their own lives after being accused of wrongdoing, even though the Post Office and Fujitsu knew the Horizon system was flawed.

The miscarriage of justice left the Post Office’s reputation, and that of former bosses including chief executive Paula Vennells, in tatters.

A subsequent corporate governance mess under the last government further dragged the Post Office’s name through the mud, with the then chief executive, Nick Read, accused of being absorbed by his own remuneration.

In recent months, the government has outlined a further redress scheme aimed at compensating victims of the Capture accounting software which was in use at Post Offices between 1992 and 2000.

Since then, a new management team has been appointed and has set the objective of boosting postmasters’ pay and overhauling technology systems to enable Post Office branches to offer a broader range of services.