The founder of Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) has had new approval for a new pay deal that could land him a bonus worth $55.8 billion (£40 billion).
Corporate governance experts have called the new pay deal “staggering” but it met approval from shareholders in California.
Elon Musk, who is the billionaire founder of the electric car company, must build the group into a $650 billion over the next decade. Tesla is currently worth $54.6 billion.
“Elon will receive no guaranteed compensation of any kind – no salary, no cash bonuses, and no equity that vests by the passage of time,” said Tesla.
“Instead, Elon’s only compensation will be a 100 percent at-risk performance award, which ensures that he will be compensated only if Tesla and all of our stockholders do extraordinarily well,” the group added.
Corporate governance group Institutional Shareholder Services did not agree with the shareholders’ approval of the deal and was strongly against the new plan, which will start in January.
Institutional Shareholder Services said that it will “lock in unprecedented high-pay opportunities for the next decade, and seemingly limits the board’s ability to meaningfully adjust future pay levels in the event of unforeseen events or changes in either performance or strategic focus.”
Shares in Tesla are down 18 percent from the year high the group reached in September.
Tesla has faced recent pressures including production delays and increasing competition.
Investors have also expressed concern that Musk is distracted by too many other projects including his SpaceX rocket launches – a reason shareholders may have voted in favour of the new pay plan.
Following Facebook’s data breach, Musk deleted the official Facebook pages for his Tesla and SpaceX companies.
Musk took to Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) to say he “didn’t realise” that his SpaceX brand had a Facebook page. “Literally never seen it even once,” he wrote. “Will be gone soon.”
