Robyn Denholm, CFO of Australian telecom firm Telstra, will replace Elon Musk on Tesla's board of directors. The e-automaker announced late Wednesday evening.
Denholm will therefore leave its position at Telstra as soon as its notice period of six months is over. Only in October, she was appointed CFO of the telecom group. At Tesla, she has served on the Board of Directors since 2014, but according to US media reports, Musk is less close than some of the other members of the board.
Following a lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission over misleading Twitter messages, Musk must give up the chairmanship of the Tesla Board of Directors for three years. The authority accused him of market manipulation.
Musk and Tesla also each had to pay $ 20 million penalty. In addition to an outside board chairman, Tesla will have to hire two independent board members and set up a committee to monitor Musk's communications.
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In early August, Musk had written on Twitter that he might take the company off the stock market paying $ 420 a share, and funding was secured. Musk has more than 22 million followers on Twitter. There were strong price fluctuations. Later, Musk corrected himself: Tesla remains on the stock market. It turned out that he had no financing commitments from investors.
The boards of directors in US companies play a stronger role than supervisory boards in Germany: In addition to supervisory functions, they also determine the strategy. It is not uncommon for the chief executive officer to chair the board of directors.
Denholm has experience in the automotive industry: She once worked in finance at Toyota in Australia. Later, she worked in the tech industry, working at Sun Microsystems and being head of finance at network specialist Juniper Networks before moving to Telstra. There she was initially responsible for the operative business and took over only on October 1, the position of Chief Financial Officer.