Elon Musk stole the show in the final minutes of Tesla’s Wednesday earnings call to label the advisory firms pushing shareholders to reject his $1 trillion pay package “corporate terrorists.”
After months of being relatively quiet following his resignation from the Department of Government Efficiency and subsequent fallout with President Donald Trump, Musk slammed proxy advisory firms Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis.
“ISS and Glass Lewis have no actual ownership themselves and often vote along random political lines unrelated to shareholder interests! This is a major problem that is not just limited to Tesla,” Musk wrote on X.
A spokesperson for Glass Lewis told Fortune in a statement its job is to provide analysis and recommendations to its clients.
“Those that are Tesla shareholders will ultimately make their own decisions about Mr. Musk’s pay proposal and the Board directors that put it forward for shareholder vote,” the statement read.
ISS declined to comment. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk, who has a net worth of $455 billion, said he needs an ownership stake “in the mid-20s approximately” to achieve his goals at Tesla. The pay package in question would give Musk about $1 trillion over 10 years if he meets performance metrics, one of which includes boosting the company’s market cap more than 500% to $8.5 trillion.
ISS and Glass Lewis both issued reports earlier this month questioning Musk’s pay package, in part because of the package’s size and because it would dilute existing shareholders’ holdings.
While Tesla claimed regular benchmarking doesn’t apply to Musk’s pay because no other company has “remotely similar goals embodied in their compensation programs,” Glass Lewis wrote in the report Musk’s 2025 performance award is “unprecedented” compared to other public companies, and around 33.5x larger than its predecessor from 2018.
“It is clear that the quantum, on a realizable and granted basis, outpaces all other pay packages.”
