Tesla Inc said board member Robyn Denholm will replace Elon Musk as its chair, more than a month after the billionaire had to step down as the electric-car maker's chairman as part of a settlement with US regulators.
Tesla had until Nov. 13 to name an independent board chairman under its agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which said Musk's tweets about taking the company private were fraudulent and that the billionaire should quit as chairman but could retain his role as CEO.
Musk, who has been on Tesla's board since 2004, tweeted in August he was considering taking the company private for $420 per share and had secured funding for a deal that was later scuttled but attracted scrutiny from several government agencies.
The appointment of Denholm caps months of turbulence for the company and its stock as investors called for stronger oversight of Musk, whose erratic public behavior raised concerns about his ability to steer the company through a rocky phase of growth.
Denholm is currently chief financial officer at Australian telecoms operator Telstra Corp Ltd and has been an independent director on Tesla's nine-member board since 2014.
Denholm takes over as Tesla's chair immediately and will leave her role as CFO and head of strategy at Telstra once her six-month notice period with the company is complete, Tesla said late on Wednesday. She was appointed as Telstra's CFO in July.
Tesla said Denholm, one of the two women on its board, will serve as chair on a full-time basis and will temporarily step down as chair of the company's audit committee until she leaves Telstra.
"Would like to thank Robyn for joining the team. Great respect. Very much look forward to working together," Musk tweeted early on Thursday.
The Financial Times had in October reported that outgoing Twenty-First Century Fox Inc Chief Executive James Murdoch was the lead candidate for the job, citing two people briefed on discussions. Musk later tweeted that this was "incorrect."
Murdoch is also an independent director on Tesla's board.
The carmaker last month quieted some critics after it reported a net profit and positive cash flow in the third quarter as higher production volumes of its crucial Model 3 sedan began to pay off, delivering on Musk's promise to turn the company profitable.
A Tesla spokeswoman said Denholm would receive an annual cash retainer of $300,000 and 8,000 stock options annually.
The spokeswoman also said Tesla was actively looking for two additional independent directors.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
Luxury electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc fired about 400 employees this week, including associates, team leaders and supervisors, a former employee told Reuters on Friday.
The dismissals were a result of a company-wide annual review, Tesla said in an emailed statement, without confirming the number of employees leaving the company.
"It's about 400 people ranging from associates to team leaders to supervisors. We don't know how high up it went," said the former employee, who worked on the assembly line and did not want to be identified.
Though Tesla cited performance as the reason for the firings, the source told Reuters he was fired in spite of never having been given a bad review.
The Palo Alto, California-based company said earlier in the month that "production bottlenecks" had left Tesla behind its planned ramp-up for the new Model 3 mass-market sedan.
The company delivered 220 Model 3 sedans and produced 260 during the third quarter. In July, it began production of the Model 3, which starts at $35,000 - half the starting price of the Model S.
Mercury News had earlier reported about the firing of hundreds of employees by Tesla in the past week.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru and Alexandria Sage in San Francisco; Editing by Andrew Hay)
source: news.abs-cbn.com
Tesla Inc, the California-based electric carmaker, said Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd acquired a 5 percent stake in the U.S. company for $1.78 billion.
The purchase, revealed in a U.S. regulatory filing, gives Shenzhen-based Tencent a growing presence in the rapidly expanding future mobility sector, with investments in U.S. and Chinese startup companies that provide ride sharing services and are developing self-driving electric vehicles.
Tencent's investment also provides Tesla with an additional cash cushion as it prepares to boost production volume and launch its new Model 3. Tesla's shares were up 2.7 percent at $277.35 in early trading.
Founded in 1998 by entrepreneur Ma Huateng, Tencent is one of Asia's largest tech companies, best known for its widely used WeChat mobile messaging app.
Tencent was an early investor in NextEV, a Shanghai-based electric vehicle startup which since has rebranded itself as Nio and whose U.S. headquarters in San Jose is not far from Tesla's Palo Alto base. Tencent also maintains a U.S. office in Palo Alto, in the heart of California's Silicon Valley.
Tencent has funded at least two other Chinese EV startups, including Future Mobility in Shenzhen.
Tencent owns about 8.2 million shares in Tesla, the carmaker said. Tencent is now the fifth-largest shareholder in Tesla, behind Elon Musk and investment companies Fidelity, Baillie Gifford and T. Rowe Price.(http://bit.ly/2nvNeMI)
As Tesla is doing, Nio and Future Mobility have said they are working on self-driving electric vehicles that could be introduced by 2020.
In addition, Tencent has invested in Didi Chuxing, the world's second-largest ride services company behind Uber, and in Lyft, Uber's chief U.S. rival.
Elon Musk-led Tesla raised about $1.2 billion by selling common shares and convertible debt earlier this month.
Musk is Tesla's top shareholder, with a stake of about 21 percent as of Dec. 31.
(Reporting by Rishika Sadam in Bengaluru, Sijia Jiang in Hong Kong and Paul Lienert in Detroit; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
source: news.abs-cbn.com
Tesla Inc founder and Chief Executive Elon Musk has launched a company called Neuralink Corp through which computers could merge with human brains, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
Neuralink is pursuing what Musk calls the "neural lace" technology, implanting tiny brain electrodes that may one day upload and download thoughts, the Journal reported.
Musk has not made an official announcement, but Neuralink was registered in California as a "medical research" company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself, a person briefed on the plans told the Journal.
It is unclear what sorts of products Neuralink might create, but people who have had discussions with the company describe a strategy similar to space launch company SpaceX and Tesla, the Journal report said.
In recent weeks, Neuralink has also hired leading academics in the field, the Journal reported.
(Reporting by Nikhil Subba in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)
source: news.abs-cbn.com
