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Norway’s massive sovereign wealth fund announced it will vote against Elon Musk’s proposed compensation package for Tesla, the plan that has been billed as potentially the largest CEO pay deal in history. The fund — which holds just over one percent of Tesla’s stock — said the size and structure of the award raise serious governance concerns and it will oppose the measure at Tesla’s shareholder meeting.
The package on the table could, if all lofty targets are met, amount to as much as $1 trillion over a decade, tied to aggressive market-cap and production milestones that would require Tesla to become one of the most valuable companies in the world. Detractors point to dilution and the headline figure, but those who built businesses understand that outsized outcomes require outsized incentives.
Norges Bank Investment Management framed its opposition around the award’s total size, shareholder dilution, and what it calls a lack of mitigation for “key person risk,” and it also said it would withhold support for two directors and a broad employee equity plan. That kind of heavy-handed meddling by a government-run investment arm should alarm free-market advocates.
Let’s be plain: Elon Musk has earned the right to aggressive compensation structures through results few CEOs ever deliver. A privately managed fund, or real shareholders focused on long-term value, would weigh the potential upside to Tesla’s investors from Musk’s leadership rather than reflexively bow to a political narrative about billionaire excess. Norges’ one-percent stake does not give it the moral high ground to lecture American capitalists on rewards and risk.
Tesla’s board has warned that Musk might walk away if shareholders reject the plan, a blunt but honest reality check about how vital a visionary CEO can be to a company’s prospects. Major asset managers have been circumspect, and the coming votes will show whether institutional stewards side with innovation or with a sanitized, risk-averse status quo.
This fight is also a proxy battle over the influence of ESG-minded investors and proxy advisers, who increasingly conflate political preferences with fiduciary duty. When advisory firms and foreign government funds start dictating compensation norms, ordinary shareholders and entrepreneurs lose; America’s dynamism relies on rewarding audacity and execution, not punishing it.
Shareholders decide on November 6, 2025, and the choice is straightforward: side with innovation and the kind of risk-taking that builds industries, or side with a creeping managerialism that seeks to neuter incentives across the board. Hardworking Americans who back enterprise should hope investors recognize that punishing success with moralizing votes is a sure way to slow the economy and surrender American competitiveness to stodgy, state-run portfolios.
