Liam Denning, Columnist

It's Still Musk First, Shareholders Second for Tesla's Board

Succession planning would be a sign of the company’s directors looking out for investors. Alas, it was too much to hope for.

May 1, 2025 at 6:02 PM UTC

By Liam Denning

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

CEO conflict.
Photographer: Sean Gallup/Getty Images Europe

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Perhaps the biggest bombshell in the Wall Street Journal’s story about succession planning at Tesla Inc. is that the board appeared to have been doing its job.

Robyn Denholm, who chairs that board, issued a statement on X saying that the report that search firms had been contacted to find a replacement for Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk was “absolutely false.” Musk, owner of X, went further, calling it a “DELIBERATELY FALSE ARTICLE” which failed to include an “unequivocal denial” provided by the board before publication. As of now, the WSJ’s story remains online and has been updated to note that Tesla issued a denial hours after publication, saying none was provided beforehand.