SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package won an overwhelming 77% of votes cast by Tesla investors at its annual meeting, a company filing showed on Friday, despite vocal opposition from a number of institutional investors and proxy advisory firms.
The filing did not break down the vote based on the type of investor, but it underscored the support that Musk enjoys from retail investors, many of whom are fans of the mercurial billionaire.
Shares rose 1% before the bell Friday, after rallying nearly 3% in the previous session following a Musk post ahead of the vote that said the package was being approved by “wide margins”.
Investors holding 1.76 billion shares voted in favor of the pay package, which is the largest in U.S. corporate history, while 528.9 million shares voted against and 20.6 million shares abstained, Friday’s filing showed.
In 2018, 73% of Tesla investors had voted in favor of the same pay package, which was voided by a Delaware judge this year.
The approval does not, however, resolve a lawsuit on the pay package in a Delaware court, which some legal experts said could stretch out for months. The judge invalidated the pay in January, describing it as “unfathomable”.
(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin in San Francisco and Aditya Soni in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)
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