Australian accountant Robyn Denholm takes over as Tesla’s chair as part of SEC settlement after Elon Musk’s bad behavior.
After weeks of backroom gossip and tea-leaf reading by automotive analysts, Tesla has finally found a stand-in for its number-one Bad Boy, company co-founder Elon Musk.
The carmaker has promoted one of its independent directors to replace Musk as chairman.
Or should that be chairwoman? Either way, Australian accountant Robyn Denholm’s appointment to govern one of the world’s sexiest if star-crossed corporations on the planet got a solid round of applause from Wall Street where investors had just about all they could take from Musk and his schoolyard antics. His tweet earlier this year that he wanted to take Tesla private and that he had the investors to make that happen was a classic out-of-left-field Musk move, rattling investors and drawing the heat of federal regulators who decided enough was enough: Denholm’s appointment, and the corporate reshuffling that it represents, was agreed to by Musk in a September court settlement with the SEC, a settlement that in true Musk fashion he blasted the minute the ink was dry.
After long criticizing Tesla’s short sellers, those investors who bet that the company will fail, Musk mocked the SEC thusly:
“Just want to [sic] that the Shortseller Enrichment Commission is doing incredible work. And the name change is so on point!”
So who is Tesla’s new grande dame?
Here are 14 things you might not know about Robyn Denholm:
