After facing tremendous pressure from shareholders to install independent directors without ties to Elon Musk, Tesla (NASDAQ:$TSLA) has added two CEOs from major media companies to its board.
Mentioned previously, the appointments of Linda Johnson Rice and James Murdoch came after a fleet of shareholders wrote a letter in April advising the company to install two new directors without strong ties to Musk and his numerous business ventures. What was the reasoning behind these demands? Well, the group was motivated by concerns that the current board was unable to make independent decisions and more likely to make calls that put board member’s business interests ahead of the company’s needs and goals.
These fears were aggravated by the controversial acquisition of SolarCity in 2016, which is a solar power company chaired by Musk and run by his cousin, who supposedly owned more than 20% of both businesses at the time of the merger. Now that Rice and Murdoch have been added to the board, the California-based company’s board has been expanded to nine people, three of which are thought to be independent.
Meet the New Board Members
Linda Johnson Rice
Rice took on the responsibility of running the publisher of Jet and Ebony magazines after selling Johnson Publishing to a Texas-based private equity firm. Additionally, Rice has been active on a number of other boards and will become Tesla’s second female director.
“Linda has extensive corporate board experience, having previously served on the boards of a number of companies across a variety of industries, including Bausch & Lomb, Continental Bank, Quaker Oats, Dial Corporation, MoneyGram, and Kimberly-Clark Corporation, and currently serving on the boards of Omnicom Group (NYSE:$OMC) and GrubHub (NYSE:$GRUB),” the company said in a statement.
James Murdoch
Like Rice, Murdoch is well-known to investors. He replaced his father, Rupert Murdoch, as CEO of 21st Century Fox (NASDAQ:$FOXA) in 2015. Not long after, he became chairman of Sky, which is his father’s British television broadcaster.
In a statement, Tesla applauded Murdoch junior’s focus on environmental issues: “In addition to being a key driver of 21st Century Fox’s domestic and international expansion, James has been instrumental in the company’s robust social impact initiatives, including its decade-long leadership on environmental sustainability.”
Featured Image: twitter
