Elon Musk reveals Tesla staff are helping at Twitter in testimony during shareholder lawsuit

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has revealed some of the carmaker's staff have been enlisted to work at Twitter, days after he took the reins at the social media giant and fired thousands of its staff.

Musk made the comments in a Delaware courtroom Wednesday while giving testimony to defend himself in a shareholder lawsuit challenging a compensation package that he was awarded by Tesla's board of directors.

The case comes as Musk is struggling to oversee a chaotic overhaul of Twitter Inc., the social media platform he was forced to buy for $44 billion in a separate legal battle before the same judge after trying to back out of that deal.

Musk told the court that some Tesla engineers were assisting in evaluating Twitter's engineering teams, but said that work was done on a "voluntary basis" and "after hours."

Tesla investors are understood to be growing concerned about Musk's focus on Twitter. On Monday, Musk tweeted he had worked through the night at Twitter's San Francisco headquarters and would keep "working & sleeping here" until the social media platform was fixed.

In testimony that followed Musk's on Wednesday, James Murdoch, a Tesla director, told the court that the company's audit committee was monitoring the Twitter situation, saying the committee had discussions about having some Tesla engineers do work at Twitter.

"Most of the work, my understanding is, has been done. It was a short-term deployment," he said, adding the work is "paid for."

"The audit committee has said that, if it is taking away from Tesla work, that's something we also have to be very aware of and that we don't want it to be that way."

He also said Musk asked a few team heads to see if there were people interested in helping Twitter.

Case challenges Musk's pay at Tesla

Tesla shareholder Richard Tornetta is asking the court to rescind Musk's $55 billion US ($73 billion Cdn) compensation package, alleging the billionaire CEO used his dominance over Tesla's board to dictate terms of the pay package, which did not require him to work at Tesla full-time.

On Wednesday, Musk denied that he dictated terms of his Tesla compensation package or attended any meetings at which the plan was discussed by the board, its compensation committee, or a working group that helped develop it.

"I was entirely focused on the execution of the company," he said.

Musk, known for his combative testimony, told the court in his opening remarks that he thought it was "extremely unlikely" that Tesla Inc. would succeed in achieving his vision in 2016, requiring his full attention.

Musk acknowledged that he vacationed with board members and sometimes tweeted about the company without clearing the messages with a Tesla lawyer as required by a 2018 settlement with a securities regulator.

Musk also told the court that he didn't want to be chief executive of Tesla or any other company, preferring to think of himself as an engineer.

In testimony that followed Musk's, Murdoch told the court that Musk had, in the last few months, identified someone as a potential successor to head the electric carmaker, but did not name that person.

Unique case

The disputed Tesla package allows Musk to buy one per cent of Tesla's stock at a deep discount each time escalating performance and financial targets are met. Otherwise, Musk gets nothing.

Tesla has hit 11 of the 12 targets, according to court papers.

The legal team for Musk and the Tesla directors, who are also defendants, have cast the pay package as a set of audacious goals that worked by driving 10-fold growth in Tesla's stock value, to more than $600 billion from around $50 billion.

They have argued the plan was developed by independent board members, advised by outside professionals and with input from large shareholders.

Shareholders generally cannot challenge executive compensation because courts typically defer to the judgment of directors. The Musk case survived a motion to dismiss because it was determined he might be considered a controlling shareholder, which means stricter rules apply.

"There is no case in which a 21.9 per cent shareholder who is also the chief executive has received a structured payout plan of this magnitude," Lawrence Cunningham, a corporate law professor at George Washington University, said of the lack of precedent.