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James Murdoch In Line To Replace Musk As Tesla Chairman, Says Report [Update] (reuters.com)
21st Century Fox CEO James Murdoch is the lead candidate to replace Elon Musk as Tesla chairman, the Financial Times reported today. The company has until November 13 to appoint an independent chairman of the board, part of settlements reached last month between Tesla, Musk and U.S. regulators in the wake of Musk tweeting in August that he had secured funding to take the company private. Reuters reports: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which said the statement was fraudulent, allowed the billionaire to retain his role as CEO while stripping him of his chairmanship and imposing a penalty of $20 million on each party. Murdoch, who is a nonexecutive director of Tesla, has signaled he wants the job, the report said. The son of Fox mogul Rupert Murdoch, he joined Tesla's board in July 2017 after years of work with media companies. He has no experience in manufacturing and has never led a company that makes cars or electric vehicles.
Murdoch currently serves on the boards of 21st Century Fox and News Corp. He stepped down from the board of Sky Plc on Tuesday following the completion of Comcast Corp's takeover of the broadcaster. Glass Lewis research director Courteney Keatinge said in a telephone interview on Wednesday that while Murdoch's departure from Sky could alleviate some concerns, the Tesla chairmanship would still require a big time commitment as the company faces pressures on many fronts. Update: In a tweet late Wednesday, Musk said Financial Times' report was inaccurate.
Murdoch currently serves on the boards of 21st Century Fox and News Corp. He stepped down from the board of Sky Plc on Tuesday following the completion of Comcast Corp's takeover of the broadcaster. Glass Lewis research director Courteney Keatinge said in a telephone interview on Wednesday that while Murdoch's departure from Sky could alleviate some concerns, the Tesla chairmanship would still require a big time commitment as the company faces pressures on many fronts. Update: In a tweet late Wednesday, Musk said Financial Times' report was inaccurate.
Murdoc is replacing MacGyver? He gonna install Blofeld as CEO next?
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
...Grabs popcorn...
I guess we'll find out what happens when you replace crazy with evil.
Interesting. Rupert Murdoch's son is heading a company which is heavily invested by the Saudis. Sounds like a company worth investing in with those fine fellows on board.
Dad's gonna bump off some time soon. Someone has to ensure the trust fund stays full of cash.
A similar thing happened to Aptera Motors. A great little company with lots of potential (queue the electricity jokes), but they never reached their potential - all due to the idiots on the board.
So sad. If Murdoch does take the reins, I predict Elon will resign as CEO, and simply keep his spot on the board.
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
You know what will make these cars better? If we add this cool new invention called the "Internal Combustion Engine"!
Then, by my understanding, a whole shitpile of people basically begged him not to go through with it because it would be catatsrophically stupid.
In the aftermath of that social onslaught, Musk apparently had some sense knocked into him and so he announced he would not be making Tesla private This doesn't mean he necessarily ever lied, but had definitely spoken far too hastily, because it was not something that had apparently thought through.
But again.... how is any of this fraud?
Stupid as shit, sure.... and it's only fair there should be consequences for that, but fraud?
Fraud requires an intent, or at least a probable intent, to deceive, and I just didn't see that coming from him on this point. He had no incentive to deceive anyone about taking Tesla private... he had his reasons, and presumably they weren't good enough in the big picture to justify actually doing that. That just means he made a mistake, it doesn't mean he lied about it.
Again though, mistakes can reasonably have consequences, but hanging the term "fraud" on it is, I think, a pretty gross mischaracterization of what actually occurred.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Another 4:20 tweet. Dude is just asking for the SEC to toss him in prison at this point.
Maybe with those two independent seats you've got to put people in, you consider someone with experience running a manufacturing or logistics operation, which seem to be the two things Tesla really needs, and right now.
Maybe that person will have a friend that can act as a Chief Operating Officer, who also has manufacturing and / or logistics experience. Bonus points if they have experience in the automotive industry with actually making and delivering cars at volume.
Just a thought.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
It was nice while it lasted, I guess.
Now the profit leeches got them, just like they destroy everything else.
Who cares if humanity advances? Who cares about happiness? Gotta make a quick buck. Not earn. Make It is all that matters. No reason, other than circular logic and "growth".
You know... that thing that is the opposite of stability, and hence the opposite of survival, and predominantly the domain of deadly explosions and deadly pathogens. (The not very successful ones, that kill themselves in the process.)
Fox News buys Tesla? I have no further interest in this story.
How would you know Musk's tweet is incorrect?
Great they'll ruin Tesla the way they ruined Australia's NBN
"I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google"
That would imply that Tesla cars would not be an option for many any more.
EV use has nothing to do with climate change in either direction.
The amount of extra CO2 we humans release into the environment is considered to have a significant impact on the climate, according to current scientific consensus.
Usage(1) of EVs compared to ICE cars release less CO2 in the atmosphere.
It ranges between "a bit less" up to "almost none released", depending on you local electricity energy source mix, except in a few countries (like India, China and Australia - if my memory of that study is right - where things are more or less equal)
Even in those place, if you replace ICE cars with EVs, even if it doesn't change anything *right now*, it's eventually going to change things *instantaneously* once the country switches to greener electricity sources mix.
Whereas if a new less-emitting ICE is invented, it will only show changes much later, as older vehicles are replaced with newer.
Basically, an EV has the (indirect) emission of whatever happens to be the electricity source mix last night when it charged.
Whereas an ICE car has the (direct) emission due to the efficiency of whatever ICE was built into it several years ago (+ indirect emissions linked to keep the distribution network).
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(1): over the whole lifetime of a vehicle, the *usage* is what has proportionally the highest impact on the environment (as opposed to the manufacturing which is quite minuscule in comparison).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
At best, he's a typical corp hopper.. exchanges long term interests for quick profits. At worse, this is somebody who's going to do the bidding of Tesla's competitors and ruin the company.
The real question is -- how much damage can he do to Tesla Motors before Musk can return, in 3 years.. This seems similar to Steve Jobs being kicked out of Apple for a long time... then Apple revived when he returned, just before otherwise inevitable bankruptcy. The difference is that Musk still has a major role in the company.
I don't like to be conspiratorial but the evidence for an anti-Tesla Motors conspiracy is pretty abundant. The bad reviews started coming out in earnest, just after reaching goals on time in terms of production.
Does anyone else get the feeling that if this news is true, it's Stephen Elop at Nokia all over again?
That family has an incredibly poor record in the UK. I would venture to say that his corporate strategy is 'Be Evil'.