- Elon Musk turned down a dinner invitation from Norges Bank Investment Management CEO Nicolai Tangen after the fund voted against his record $56 billion pay package.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk declined to dine with Nicolai Tangen, the head of Norway’s Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages a sovereign wealth fund that is one of the carmaker’s largest shareholders.
A series of text messages from October show that Musk canceled plans to attend a dinner at Tangen’s home in Oslo, Norway with the CEOs of Nestle, Ferrari, Novo Nordisk, and DoorDash after the Government Pension Fund Global voted against ratifying his Tesla pay package last June. The fund, which follows a set of strict investment guidelines, chose not to support Musk’s options grant first in 2018, and again a second time in 2024. In its vote rationale, the fund stated that it appreciated the significant value generated under Musk, but it was “concerned about the total size of the award, the structure given performance triggers, dilution, and lack of mitigation of key person risk.”
Musk's award was previously valued at $56 billion, and Tesla’s increase in market cap has since driven the value to $100 billion. A majority of Tesla shareholders supported the second ratification vote and Musk appealed a ruling rescinding the award earlier this month.
The pay package is the largest executive comp plan in history.
Several month after the fund’s second “against” vote, Musk turned down Tangen’s invitation to the dinner party.
“This would be very difficult and expensive for me to attend,” Musk wrote in text messages first reported by the Norwegian business publication E24. “When I ask you for a favor, which I very rarely do, and you decline, then you should not ask me for one until you’ve done something above nothing to make amends. Friends are as friends do.”
Tangen responded: “Noted and fully understand. As a large shareholder we cheer for you. Good luck with everything.”
The text messages were obtained through the Norwegian equivalent of the Freedom of Information Act. Further text messages show that when Musk learnedprevious text message had become public, he confronted Tangen.
“Did you send my text messages to the press,” Musk asked Tangen.
Tangen informed Musk that as the head of his country’s sovereign wealth fund his text messages were “automatically public record.”
“They have not sent your personal comments, just the part where you said you were not coming to the conference,” Tangen told Musk. “The country is obsessed about you, but this is not reflecting badly on you. Still sorry for any inconvenience.”
Musk sent screenshots of an exchange he had with an unnamed third party who had also accused Tangen of giving the press their text messages. In that conversation, Musk called Tangen a “dangerous politician” who was using the “fund to promote himself.”
NBIM, which is the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, has a roughly 1% stake in Tesla.
Tesla and NBIM did not respond to a request for comment.
Last December, Delaware chief judge Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick upheld her verdict from January voiding Musk’s pay package on grounds the board had not been sufficiently independent when negotiating his compensation. Musk’s package granted him 12 tranches of Tesla stock if the company hit certain milestones for revenue and market capitalization. Since 2019, Tesla’s market cap has risen more than $1 trillion dollars.
Tesla’s current market cap is estimated at $1.3 trillion, after its stock price rose roughly 60% since President Donald Trump won the November election. That rise is a major source of Musk’s wealth, which is roughly $417 billion, according to Forbes.
