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Tesla and Elon Musk concluded a contract on one of the key provisions of the agreement, six weeks after the settlement of the securities fraud case, namely the appointment of a new chairman of the board, who ordered an order for a company whose automation was often overshadowed by Mr. Muska.
The company said that current Director Robyn Denholm will immediately become its chairman. Mr Musk resigned as president last month but remains the chief executive officer of Tesla.
Ms Denholm, 55, is the chief financial officer of Telstra, who dominates telecoms in Australia. She is a long-time technology executive with experience in the Silicon Valley, where Tesla is located and she once worked for Toyota in Australia.
The move to replace Mr Musk as president, announced late late in the evening, was part of a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission in September to deal with the failure of his claim to secure the financing of private buy-outs. This claim, which was published in August in the Twentieth Century, quickly dropped in doubt. (Mr Musk later explained on the blog that conversations with sovereign wealth in Saudi Arabia led to having such money and enthusiasm for such an arrangement.)
According to the settlement, Tesla agreed to appoint a new manager for the board, which will be distributed next Tuesday from the function of Mr Muska as executive director.
The company also had to add two independent members of the committee and set up a standing committee to monitor Mr. Muska, including her posts on Twitter. To fulfill this requirement is several weeks.
Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan Business School Ross, said that the appointment of Mrs Denholm was "technically compliant" with S.E.C. but he wondered how much Mrs Denholm might be able to turn against a strong personality like Mr. Musk.
"If the goal is to ensure the control of adults, this will not work," said Mr Gordon. "She was on the board through all the shenanigans, she never went to protest, she is a man's advocate, and if she fails, she will leave the man who will not leave."
Mr. Musk has encouraged investors and public imagination with their elegant electric cars and great dreams of space travel and other ambitions. But his public statements were increasingly lost by Tesla shareholders and the directors they represent. Production problems were added only to this issue.
In the third quarter Tesla reported significant profits, which greatly increased the volume of production and sales of its 3-seater model. Earnings surpassed the expectations of many analysts and for now reduced concerns about their finances. In the first half of 2018, the company reported losses and spent more than $ 1 billion in cash.
"They're doing a lot better than we thought to be before the quarter," said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Yale School of Management. "You must give them credit for this."
However, Tesla still faces challenges. It must ensure that it can spend profits in the fourth and fourth quarters, in the next few months it pays more than a billion dollars to bondholders, deals with quality issues, and determines the chaotic delivery system.
Tesla also had the exile of senior executives. This year he had three chief accountants. And while cheating with S.E.C. has been settled, Tesla's previous production forecast for model 3 is still under investigation by the agency.
"In almost all areas they had extremely high volatility," said Sonnenfeld.
David Whiston, an analyst at Morningstar following Tesla, said that the appointment of Mrs Denholm was "a good balance" and was probably best for Tesla's share price. They were brought in a hard drive that "would not have had problems with Elon Twitter," he added, "I would deal with Elon and would not work at all."
On Thursday, Tesla's shares rose by almost 1 percent on Thursday.
However, Mr Whiston has also expressed doubts about how much Mrs Denholm will be able to limit Mr Musk. In the last few weeks, the Executive Director has taken note of S.E.C. on Twitter as "Commission for the enrichment of horticulture, NATO announced that in Tesla there is no longer a title to raise questions about whether it will continue to have the last word, including with the new head of the committee.
"It's worrying me that Elon has already ridiculed S.E.C. twice," said Mr. Whiston. He said Mr Musk must "stop playing games and just make expensive cars."
Denholm, director of Tesla since 2014, is one of nine members of the board, whose independence was a problem. In June there are shareholders present proposals for the division of posts of the Chief Executive Officer and the President and for the renouncement of re-election to some of the first directors – including Brother Musk, Kimball. Tesla said that the measures were largely rejected. Mr Musk has about one-fifth of the company's shares.
Mr Sonnenfeld said that he would rather see Tesla's president's name with profound automotive experiences, such as Alan Mulally or Mark Fields, both former Ford driver's drivers. "They would do it to get someone who would know how to lead the production process without sleeping on the floor of the factory," he said.
Mrs. Denholm's exposure to the automotive industry came in at the age of seven in Toyota Motor Corporation Australia, where she was the national finance director before she left in 1996 at Sun Microsystems, the former Silicon Valley power plant, later acquired by Oracle.
Before her current position at Telstra, Mr. Denholm, Executive Director of Juniper Networks, who has been manufacturing computer networking equipment for about a decade. He has Australian and American citizenship.
Tesla said that Mrs Denholm will withdraw from her role at Telstra when her six-month notice period is completed.
Mr Whiston said that Mrs Denholm's plan to leave Telstra "shows Tesla's commitment to ensure that this control is carried out properly." Professor Gordon warned that when she leaves Telstra, she will be the president of Tesla, "which makes him less likely to face Mr. Musk. "It will be a job that he does not want to lose," he said.
Mr. Musk has announced changes in a typical way – on Twitter.
In a Tesla message, Mr. Musk and the company quoted Mr. Denholm's experience and years. "Robyn has a wealth of experience both in the technical and automotive industry, and in the last four years, he also contributed significantly as a member of the management board in Tesla, which helped us to become a profitable company," he said. "I look forward to working even more closely with Robyn, as we continue to foster the advent of sustainable energy."
In addition to his disturbing tweet about buying, Mr. Musk had a nasty social media battle with a British diver who was involved in the daring rescue of 12 boys in a flooded cave in Thailand in the summer, prompting him to return quickly.
In September, in an interview with Joey Rogan, a comedian, he seemed to smoke marijuana briefly. The interview was held in California, where the use of recreational marijuana is legal.
Now the question is whether Mr Musk can be brought into line with the more conventional corporate culture that Mrs Denholm is supposed to represent.
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