Happy Wednesday and welcome to your morning wrap of the latest business and political headlines from around the world.
First up, one of Tesla’s biggest investors said it would vote against a proposed compensation package that could pay Elon Musk as much as $1 trillion over a decade, Associated Press reported.
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund made the announcement overnight ahead of the company’s annual meeting on Thursday (local time). The fund has a 1.16% stake in Tesla, which is the sixth-largest holding amongst institutional investors.
“While we appreciate the significant value created under Mr Musk’s visionary role, we are concerned about the total size of the award, dilution, and lack of mitigation of key person risk consistent with our views on executive compensation,” Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages the country’s Government Pension Fund Global, said. “We will continue to seek constructive dialogue with Tesla on this and other topics.”
The plan would grant Musk 12 tranches of stock options if the company hit ambitious targets, such as a US$8.5 trillion market cap and developments in driving and robotics.
Meanwhile, Baron Capital Management, which holds 0.4% of Tesla’s stock, said earlier this week it would support the package. “Elon is the ultimate ‘key man’ of key man risk. Without his relentless drive and uncompromising standards, there would be no Tesla,” wrote founder Ron Baron.
Tesla chair Robyn Denholm has previously said Elon Musk could leave the company if shareholders do not approve the pay package, saying his leadership is critical to its success. Its shares were down 3.7% overnight.
In political news, former US Vice President Dick Cheney has died, aged 84, CNN reported.
Dick Cheney. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Often regarded as America’s most powerful modern vice president, he was the architect of the “war on terror” who helped lead the US into the ill-fated Iraq war.
Former US President George W Bush, in a statement, described him as a “decent, honourable man ... History will remember him as among the finest public servants of his generation – a patriot who brought integrity, high intelligence, and seriousness of purpose to every position.”
In his final years, Cheney became an outspoken critic of Donald Trump, whom he called a “coward” and the greatest threat to the republic. A hardline conservative, he cast his final vote in a presidential election in 2024 for Kamala Harris.
To Southeast Asia now, where at least 26 people are dead and hundreds of thousands have been forced to flee their homes as one of the strongest typhoons ripped through the central Philippines, the BBC reported.
Typhoon Kalmaegi has flooded large areas, including entire towns on the most populous central island of Cebu, where most of the fatalities occurred.
Videos online show shipping containers being carried down the street, while people shelter on rooftops.
The typhoon has weakened since making landfall yesterday, but has continued to bring winds of more than 130 km/h and is forecast to move across the Visayas Islands region and out over the South China Sea later today.
Staying with business, shares in Palantir fell as much as 10% in early trading after star hedge fund manager Michael Burry revealed a short position against the data intelligence company, the Financial Times reported.
Burry, whose role in predicting the collapse of the subprime mortgage market was depicted in the 2015 film The Big Short, has disclosed a US$912m short against Palantir, as well as a US$127m bet against AI computer chip giant Nvidia.
Burry did not respond to requests for comment, while Palantir chief executive Alex Karp appeared on CNBC where he ranted against short sellers, saying it was “batshit crazy” that he would try to short Palantir and Nvidia. “I do believe this behaviour is egregious and I’m going to be dancing around when it’s proven wrong.”
Palantir’s technology is used to collate and analyse data from supply chain analysis to surveillance of military targets and identification systems for undocumented migrants. Its shares ended down 7.94%.
Michael Burry was a central figure in the 2015 film The Big Short.
Finally, in UK politics, Finance Minister Rachel Reeves has paved the way for broad tax rises to avoid a return to “austerity”, framing her second Budget as one of “hard choices” to protect public spending while reducing the country’s debt, Reuters reported.
Three weeks out from her Budget, Reeves laid out the difficult economic backdrop she was wrestling with, pointing to a surge in debt post-Covid, years of low productivity and stubborn inflation.
“As I take my decisions on both tax and spend, I will do what is necessary to protect families from high inflation and interest rates ... to protect our public services from a return to austerity,” she told a news conference.
One Labour lawmaker, who did not wish to be named, told Reuters the party was split over probable tax rises, with some fearing how damaging it could be to break an election pledge.
