Weeks after purchasing Twitter, court testimony has revealed Elon Musk has a successor for his position as CEO at Tesla – but there is no date for when they would take the reins.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk appears to have begun to plan his exit from running the electric car company.
Tesla independent board member James Murdoch (top) has testified under oath that Elon Musk has identified a potential successor for the top job, according to a report from news outlet Reuters.
The testimony from Mr Murdoch – son of Australian-American media mogul and billionaire Rupert Murdoch – occurred during a court case in the US, in which a shareholder is suing Tesla for awarding Elon Musk a $US55 billion ($82 billion) bonus as part of his pay package in 2018.
A lawyer for the plaintiff asked Mr Murdoch to confirm that Elon Musk had never identified a potential successor, to which he replied: “He actually has.”
Mr Murdoch added that Mr Musk had identified someone to the board for the Tesla CEO position in the “last few months”.
While Tesla’s potential future CEO was not named in the remarks, it suggests Mr Musk may already have an exit plan in place.
MORE: Elon Musk claims Tesla could overtake Apple and Aramco to become world’s most valuable company
Another Tesla board member, Ira Ehrenpreis, said the company had recognised Mr Musk as being a “serial entrepreneur,” and suggested the pay package was meant to help keep the CEO at the electric car company “for a long time,” according to The Age.
In October, Mr Musk became the largest shareholder of social media platform Twitter and has spent a number of weeks at its headquarters, reportedly sleeping at its offices while restructuring the business.
Tesla stock has dropped almost 40 per cent from highs in September, with a number of company shareholders expressing their concern at Mr Musk’s recent business interests.
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