Elon Is Finally Getting Paid
Or at least, that’s what the filing would have you believe.
Tesla disclosed a $158.4 billion pay package for Elon Musk, against a median employee salary of $62,786—a ratio of 2,522,203:1, easily one of the most absurd numbers ever printed in a financial filing.
If that sounds familiar, it should. The only thing close is Musk’s own 2018 package, which briefly set the record, got struck down in court, and then—because this is how corporate governance works now—came back anyway.
But here’s the part that matters: Musk has realized exactly $0 in compensation for three consecutive years.
The $158 billion is theoretical. It assumes Tesla hits a series of increasingly aggressive milestones—many of which are still a long way off. Until then, it’s less “pay” and more a very large, very public lottery ticket.
Musk’s original package was supposed to be an outlier—a one-off structure designed for a founder-CEO trying to 10x a company. Instead, it became a template.
In the latest fiscal year, 14 CEOs in the Russell 3000 were awarded more than $100 million, including:
- Welltower — $821M
- Opendoor — $741M
- Rivian — $403M
- Wayfair — $281M
- Summit Therapeutics — $246M
- Hut 8 — $240M
- Broadcom — $205M
- Veeva Systems — $172M
- Warner Bros. Discovery — $165M
- Roivant Sciences — $163M
- Blackstone — $126M
- Goldman Sachs — $119M
- Snowflake — $101M
Not all of these look like Tesla. Most aren’t even trying to.
But the logic traveled anyway: make the number big enough, push the payout far enough into the future, and call it “performance-based.”
For investors and stewardship/proxy voting teams, the key question isn’t the headline number—it’s:
- What has to happen for this pay to be realized?
- Are the targets rigorous or easily achievable?
- What dilution are shareholders taking on?
- And how does this align with long-term value creation?
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Proxy Season Is Basically Over. The Pullback Is Real.
Proxy season is effectively over. We processed 364 filings this week and 2,327 total for 2026 annual meetings. There will be another 50–60 after the close today, and then it slows to a trickle.
At a high level, nothing changed from what we’ve been saying all season. Disclosure pulled back, and companies became more cautious in how they talk about governance and workforce issues.
Just 2.2% of companies increased disclosure year-over-year, while 54.5% decreased and 41.4% stayed the same. For Nasdaq-listed companies, only 1.3% increased disclosure and 73.2% decreased. Among Russell 2000 companies, 63.1% did not disclose any board demographic data at all, up from 12.7% in 2024.
You can see a full summary of disclosure trends from 2019–2026 by index, sector, and exchange here.
You can see it not just in the data, but in how policies are being rewritten. One of the clearer examples is the quiet pullback from Rooney Rule-style commitments.
These policies were becoming ubiquitous just a couple of years ago. Now they’re disappearing.
Alphabet (Google), for example, went from this:
Given the global and complex nature of Alphabet’s business, the Board believes it is important to consider diversity of race, ethnicity, gender, age, education, skills, cultural background, and professional experiences in evaluating candidates. Accordingly, when evaluating candidates for nomination as new directors, the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee will consider (and will ask any search firm that it engages to provide) a set of candidates that includes both underrepresented people of color and different genders.
To this:
Given the global and complex nature of Alphabet”s business, the Board believes it is important to consider a range of skills, professional experiences, backgrounds, and viewpoints.
Same company, same board, same underlying idea—just stripped of anything that could be interpreted as a commitment.
We’re seeing the same pattern in board skills matrices. Something we constantly hear from clients is a simple question: does the current board actually have the right mix of skills and experience for the business?
In theory, the skills matrix should help answer that. In practice, it rarely has. Directors tend to have a lot of boxes checked.
This season, it crossed into something else.
CoStar Group’s proxy this week is a good example. The company lists 13 different skills and experiences—and every single director is marked as having at least “some” level of each one, including “AI / Generative AI (GenAI) Strategy & Governance.”
At that point, it’s hard to argue the matrix is providing any signal at all.
For investors, the implication is straightforward. The amount of usable information hasn’t just plateaued—it’s gone backwards. What used to be relatively consistent and comparable is becoming more fragmented again, with fewer hard data points and more generalized language.
The decisions still need to get made. The inputs are just getting worse.
OSHA Inspections Didn’t Collapse. Enforcement Softened.
A New York Times piece earlier this year highlighted a sharp drop in OSHA inspections. The data they cited was directionally right—but already dated.
With data through last week, inspections haven’t fallen off a cliff. There was a decline in 2025, and 2026 is tracking roughly in line with last year on a run-rate basis.
What has changed more meaningfully is enforcement.
Looking at initial penalties (before years of negotiation and reductions), total fines fell from $493M in 2024 to $386M in 2025, and the average penalty per inspection dropped from roughly $6,500 to $5,500.
That’s not a small move. It’s a shift in how enforcement is showing up.
(The “current” penalty figures are lower and more volatile, especially in earlier years, because cases get negotiated down over time—so the initial figures are the cleaner read.)
This matters for how company-level safety data is interpreted. There’s been a lot of attention recently on declining reported injury rates at large employers, including Amazon, alongside reporting that more incidents are being handled internally rather than formally recorded.
We’ll have a more complete view in a few weeks when full-year 2025 data is available. At that point, we’ll publish updated company-level benchmarks across inspections, violations, and safety outcomes.
The early read is that the story is more nuanced than either side is presenting.
What we’re reading:
- ‘The biggest game Nike is ever going to play’: The anti-white discrimination case that could change DEI forever Former employees at both Nike and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reveal how the apparel giant found itself in the government’s sights and how this unprecedented EEOC action could upend corporate hiring. (Fast Company)
- The AI Splurge Is Costing Big Tech Its Workforce Tech companies are rushing to trade their people for more chips. Some of those companies might come to regret the exchange. Microsoft and Meta Platforms are just the latest major tech companies trying to scale back their workforces in the name of artificial intelligence. (Wall Street Journal)
- Investing in the Talent Economy: Human Capital Management Takes Center Stage Over the past five years, we have seen significant improvement in diverse workforce representation and data availability on DEI across companies globally. Corporate progress on workforce representation and improved data availability—combined with labor market changes driven by a shrinking labor force in key regions, generational shifts and AI—have created new investment opportunities and risks that we want to account for in our investment strategy. (Morgan Stanley)
- What directors’ career histories may reveal about the capabilities of Fortune 100 company boards As businesses face volatility and market shifts, many corporate boards are having to make critical decisions amid heightened uncertainty to help top management deliver growth while strengthening resilience. Against this backdrop, improving board composition could be a key strategy for enterprises seeking to build long-term strength. (Deloitte)
- 7 stories about the state of DEI at the federal level Acting as an extension of the White House and its anti-DEI agenda, several government agencies have been cracking down on DEI — in the private sector, in the public sector and on those caught in between, such as federal contractors. (HR Dive)
- Trump cracks down on women’s retreats, putting ‘new girls’ clubs’ at risk Facing decades of discrimination and exclusion, women have created networking events to help each other get a fair shake at climbing the ladder of success. But in an era that’s actively against diversity, equity and inclusion, these women-only spaces have become new targets of the Trump administration. (The Week)
- Navigating the Shift in Sustainability Proxy Voting The landscape of corporate governance is shifting rapidly. By watching shareholder resolutions , we gain a clear view of the sustainability topics that institutional investors consider material to long-term success. However, significant changes in how asset managers cast their proxy votes on environmental and social themes are creating an information gap for investors who track these trends. (Morningstar)
- See the Corporate Layoffs So Far in 2026 AI is upending workplaces in ways both real and whitewashed. Tech has been hardest-hit this year, with 40% more layoffs in the first quarter—and fresh announcements of about 10,000 more positions lost in April, including at Meta Platforms and Snap. Here’s how this year’s job cuts are stacking up. (Wall Street Journal)
- LinkedIn Top Companies 2026: Where Career Growth Is Happening Now A decade into tracking the best places to build a career, one thing is clear: how people grow at work has fundamentally changed. AI is now embedded in day-to-day work and reshaping jobs across industries, while employees move across roles more often. (LinkedIn)
- Human Capital Trends Study AI has moved from exploration to execution. Organizations are investing heavily in technology – but most are not investing in their people at the same pace. The 2026 Human Capital Trends Study shows where that gap is widening and how you can help close it. (Aon)