Tesla is awarding its CEO Elon Musk a share package valued at about $29 billion.
It is made up of 96 million shares of restricted stock.
The move comes just six months after a judge ordered the electric vehicle maker to revoke Musk’s massive pay package.
On Monday, the company said in a regulatory filing that Musk must first pay it $23.34 per share of restricted stock that vests.
That is equal to the exercise price per share of the 2018 pay package that was awarded to the company's CEO.
In December, Delaware Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick reaffirmed her earlier ruling that Tesla must revoke Musk’s multibillion-dollar pay package.
She found that Musk engineered the landmark pay package in sham negotiations with directors who were not independent.
At the time, the judge also rejected an equally unprecedented and massive fee request by plaintiff attorneys, who argued that they were entitled to legal fees in the form of Tesla stock valued at more than $5 billion.
The judge said the attorneys were entitled to a fee award of $345 million.
The rulings came in a lawsuit filed by a Tesla stockholder who challenged Musk’s 2018 compensation package, contending that shareholders who had voted for the 10-year plan in 2018 had been given misleading and incomplete information.
In their defense, Tesla's board members asserted that the shareholders who ratified the pay plan a second time in June had done so after receiving full disclosures, thereby curing all the problems the judge had cited in her January ruling.
As a result, they argued, Musk deserved the pay package for having raised Tesla's market value by billions of dollars.
That pay package carried a potential maximum value of about $56 billion, but that sum has fluctuated over the years based on Tesla’s stock price.
Musk appealed the order in March.
A month later, Tesla said in a regulatory filing that it was creating a special committee to look at Musk’s compensation as CEO.
Richard Hunter, head of markets at interactive investor, told The Independent on Tuesday: “Only time will tell whether this latest award is excessive or inspired.
“Designed to keep the CEO at the company by increasing his share stake, some uncertainty has been removed by the award. That being said, the shares have suffered on falling sales across many of its geographies as Musk’s political involvement with the White House was badly received politically, as well as being a distraction for the individual.”
Historically, Musk has been seen as the “main driver and muse” of Tesla, Hunter said.
“ While the shares are currently down by 19 per cent so far this year, over the last 12 months the price remains up by 54 per cent.
“Even so, the price is also significantly lower than its record high which was achieved in August 2020, such that repayment and justification of this huge award would be hard-earned.”
