IlluMyFi

The craven stance of Tesla’s board should not be lost in the legal back-and-forth

The first time around, judge Kathaleen McCormick of the Delaware court of chancery got it right. The $56bn pay package awarded by Tesla to Elon Musk in 2018 was indeed a governance abomination, a stitch-up in which ordinary shareholders weren’t told about the “deeply flawed” process whereby a “superstar ceo” secured wildly over-the-top terms from pliant directors.

Her closely argued ruling in January spelt it out in persuasive detail. The company had “inaccurately described key directors as independent and misleadingly omitted details about the process”. Ira Ehrenpreis, the lead director negotiating for Tesla, had a 15-year business relationship with Musk. Another member of the working group regularly went on holiday with Musk’s family. A third was the company’s general counsel and Musk’s former divorce lawyer.

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04.12.24 11:00

by theguardian.com

If Trump’s tariffs start a trade war, it would be an economic disaster | Mark We...

The president-elect’s two main arguments for his tariff threat – to reduce migration and to combat drugs – are not credible

“To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff, and it’s my favorite word,” said Donald Trump last month. Pundits, politicians and financial markets are trying to figure out why, since he announced a week ago that he would impose tariffs on the United States’s three biggest trading partners: 25% for Mexico and Canada, and 10% for China.

One theory is that tariffs can be a beautiful distraction. Trump, more than any previous US president, has fed on distractions for years, both to campaign and to govern. He can move seamlessly from one distraction to the next, like a magician preparing for the opportune moment to pull a coin from where it appears to have been hidden behind your ear.

Mexico