Indonesian billionaire KoGuan Leo, the third-largest individual Tesla shareholder, has called for CEO Elon Musk to step down in favor of a “Tim Cook-like” leader now that his attention has been largely diverted to Twitter.
“Elon abandoned Tesla and Tesla has no working CEO,” Leo tweeted Dec. 14. “Tesla needs and deserves to have working full-time CEO. What Tesla BOD should do, do nothing? Elon will find how own successor under BOD independent supervision.”
Leo suggested Tesla’s board of directors install a professional manager like Apple’s CEO Tim Cook.
“Tesla matters. Elon is a mere hired hands. He is our employee,” Leo wrote in another tweet. “Tesla is 19 year old, ranked 4th with 2.4% allocation in S&P, not a baby and soon be the biggest.”
According to Bloomberg, Leo owned around 22.6 million shares in Tesla, worth $3.4 billion, and 1.23 million stock options as of August, landing him third in the ranking of largest individual company shareholders, behind Musk and Oracle founder Larry Ellison.
Musk purchased Twitter in early October 2022 for $44.1 billion with individual shares priced at $54.20. Since then, the app and company have experienced a wave of layoffs, an exodus of both employees and users, and the turbulent waters of Musk’s daily decisions about content moderation.
Though the billionaire remains the richest man in the world, he took a $170.2 billion hit in the past calendar year. For 2022 he has fallen to $100.5 billion after soaring to $340 billion more than a year ago, according to Bloomberg, and at times has fallen to the No. 2 spot.
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