In a stunning move that sent Tesla shareholders reeling, the company’s two top executives resigned on Thursday as news of Elon Musk’s plans to add another big employee — a total outsider — led to a series of outbursts at the company’s annual meeting.
The almost simultaneous departures of Denise Russell, head of advertising sales, and Gaby Toledano, the vice president for diversity and inclusion initiatives, is an unusual move in Silicon Valley. Despite strong financial performance in 2017 by both companies and record-breaking stock prices — Tesla share rose 26 percent on Thursday morning from its record price compared with 5 percent for Twitter shares — it was not enough to keep top talent from leaving.
In short, the moves bring to mind an old-fashioned company board that does not trust its executives. The departures also leave Tesla with a handful of highly respected executives, including Chris Lattner, head of Autopilot and robotics engineering; Jonathan Chang, head of manufacturing; and Diarmuid O’Connell, head of global logistics.
But the sudden change in leadership follows a series of upheaval at Tesla. Among the high-profile changes at the company: the departure of two other top executives this month. In mid-October, Tesla fired almost all its engineers on the Autopilot team and announced that it was cutting production targets again for new vehicles.
Tesla has a long history of problems. Earlier this year, Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive and chairman, announced on Twitter that he would take the company private at $420 a share. After months of negotiations with investors including Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Saudi Public Investment Fund, he agreed to keep Tesla public….
Trump tweeted Thursday morning that he had spoken with Musk about the Saudi investment. He said the $420 price was just “a number that I picked.” But perhaps more important to Trump is a big break in two big US regulatory investigations into whether Tesla misled investors when it said it could make 7,000 cars per week.
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