Niamh Shackleton
Pope Leo has weighed in on the reports that Elon Musk might be paid $1 trillion by Tesla.
In recent days, it was reported that Tesla wants to make Musk, who briefly lost his title as the world's richest person last week, the world's first trillionaire.
As part of the proposed $1 trillion deal, Musk could have up to 423.7 million additional shares of Tesla stock in the next decade.
But he'll only get these shares if Tesla becomes worth $8.5 trillion (around eight times as much as it's currently worth).
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It's thought that Tesla has brought the whopping deal forward in a bid to get more of Musk's attention on the electric vehicle manufacturer instead of any more political ventures.
Weighing in on this, Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, said, per CNN: "The simple message the board is sending to Elon: ‘We want your attention on Tesla'."
"Implicit in that message is the promise that he’ll have the control he’s been seeking (a 25 percent stake) and that it will be worth his time," Munster went on.
In light of the reports of the possible package for Musk, Pope Leo has made a thinly veiled swipe at the South African-born businessman.
Speaking to The Crux for an interview that was released on his 70th birthday, Pope Leo said: "We live in times when polarization seems to be one of the words of the day, but it's not helping anybody.
"One which I think is very significant is the continuously wider gap between the income levels of the working class and the money that the wealthiest receive."
The pontiff went on to call out the huge differences between the salaries which CEOs get in comparison to their employees.
"CEOs that 60 years ago might have been making four to six times more than what the workers are receiving, the last figure I saw, it’s 600 times more than what average workers are receiving," Pope Leo said.
Naming Musk specifically, he continued to note: "Yesterday the news that Elon Musk is going to be the first trillionaire in the world. What does that mean and what’s that about? If that is the only thing that has value anymore, then we’re in big trouble."
America, where Pope Leo is from, is home to a huge percentage of the world's richest people.
40 percent of centi-millionaires are in the US, says Visual Capitalist, and around 30 percent of all billionaires reside there too.