Elon Musk is seeking a bigger stake in Tesla - otherwise, he fears he will be "voted out".
The billionaire businessman - who used $40 billion (R754bn currently) of his stock to help with his purchase of Twitter (now X) for $44bn - currently has a 13% stake and is the biggest shareholder of the EV giant, however, he insists he needs to own 25% if he's to remain and provide AI and robotics work.
Speaking at an earnings call on Wednesday, Bloomberg reports that he said: “I don’t want to control it, but if I have so little influence at the company at this stage, I could be voted out by some random shareholder advisory firm."
He went on to slam advisers Glass Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Services and accused them of being swayed by “activists”.
Musk added that if he were to be awarded 25%, it would give him "a strong influence" at the company, but he wouldn't want to be in charge.
He said: “That’s not so much that I could control the company, even if I go bonkers.
“But it’s enough that I have a strong influence.”
Meanwhile, Delaware Chancery Court is set to rule on whether the board exercised independence from Musk when he was awarded $55bn in 2018, after being sued by Tesla shareholder Richard Tornetta.
Musk was previously cleared of fraud charges over tweets about taking Tesla private.
He was on trial in San Francisco after investors of his electric supercar company accused him of causing them to lose money after he posted about having “funding secured” to take the company off the stock exchange in 2018.
The lawsuit claimed that Musk had been lying when he tweeted “am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured” on August 7, 2018.
They also argued that the SpaceX founder had been fibbing when he had said “Investor support is confirmed”.
After Musk shared his plans on the site, the share price rose before falling just days later.
According to experts cited by the shareholders, the losses were believed to be as high as $12bn.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission also launched legal action against Musk for defrauding investors. During this, he resigned as chairman and settled for $20 million.
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