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Elon Musk has appealed a record-breaking $56 billion pay package after it was rejected a second time.
Earlier this week, the world’s richest man filed an appeal with the Delaware Supreme Court after the case was rejected by a state judge for the second time.
Tesla shareholders had initially voted in approval of Musk’s pay package back in 2018.
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The deal gave him the ability to buy a maximum of 304 shares in the firm for $23.34 as long as he met certain performance goals.
Now, Tesla shares trade at a rate of $393 each.
Despite a majority of shareholders approving the pay deal, one investor filed a suit which claimed that the board had been misleading and that the pay package was unfair.
Delaware Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick has since rejected Musk’s bid for the pay deal, stating that Tesla’s ‘unprecedented theories go against multiple strains of settled law’.
Now, Musk has filed his appeal.
Tesla stated last month: “This ruling, if not overturned, means that judges and plaintiffs’ lawyers run Delaware companies rather than their rightful owners – the shareholders.”
Musk has also previously slammed McCormick by taking to his own social media platform X, formerly Twitter, where he described the judge as ‘a radical far left activist cosplaying as a judge’.
The tech mogul had previously said that he wants to own at least a quarter of Tesla’s shares before he makes it a ‘leader’ in robotics and AI.
This would mean buying a significant amount more as he currently owns around 13% of the firm's shares.
Musk is no stranger to using his platform to be vocal about an array of issues and in recent months has publicly expressed his political views often.
He threw his weight behind Donald Trump during last year’s presidential election, even attending political rallies.
Since Trump’s election victory, the president-elect announced that Musk would be taking on the role as head of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
While it isn’t technically a government department, it’s reported that DOGE will act as an outside advisor to Trump’s administration.
Under the new role, Musk has already promised to slash the federal budget by trillions.
Speaking about the appointment, Trump has stated that DOGE will help his team to ‘dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies’.
It is not yet clear whether this will impact Musk's appeal process.
