Samuel Pennifold
It has recently been announced that Twitter is suing billionaire Elon Musk, to try and force him to buy the social media company.
Musk, the richest man in the world, announced he was walking away from the mega takeover last week.
The South African has had quite the career in business to date, but how much does he earn?
In 2021 Musk was the highest-paid CEO in the US and is on course to back that up in 2022.
Advert
However, he is not paid in the same way as most of us are.
The SpaceX and Tesla CEO is paid through what is best understood as ‘compensation packages’, where he is rewarded whenever his companies reach certain targets.
In terms of liquid wealth or cold hard cash, Musk is paid almost nothing. He is given stock options in his companies.
For example; Musk might be able to buy 10 million Tesla shares at $50 per share, but their market value would be higher at say $100 per share.
This would mean that for a $500 million investment he would have gained the equivalent of $1 billion in net worth.
In Musk’s latest Tesla compensation package he was able to purchase 8.4 million Tesla shares at $70.01 each, the current value of Tesla shares is a little over $700.
This would equal a total value of five billion eight hundred eighty million dollars.
Musk has similar arrangements for the various other companies he is CEO of, including Neurolink and OpenAI.
Whilst stock options give the option to earn massive amounts of money very quickly it is also directly tied to the financial fortunes of the company.
In 2022 the value of Tesla stock has fallen by a little over 40%, representing a potentially massive financial loss to Musk.