What happened to Tesla's annual investor meeting?

EV maker is about to miss legal deadline

- JACK EWING

Tesla is days away from missing a deadline to hold an annual shareholders meeting, exposing itself to lawsuits and amplifying criticism that the carmaker's board of directors has been inactive while sales and the stock price slump.

In Texas, where Tesla is incorporated, the law requires companies to hold annual meetings no later than 13 months since the previous meeting. In Tesla's case, that would be Sunday, July 13.

Tesla has not announced a date for a meeting or filed any proxy statements — the documents that describe the annual meeting's agenda, the candidates for the board and proposals to be voted on.

The meeting would normally provide shareholders an opportunity to speak directly to Tesla’s board and to CEO Elon Musk at a critical time for the company. Tesla sales have been plunging, and the stock price has fallen almost 40% from a peak in December.

“This lack of transparency raises serious concerns about the company’s respect for shareholder rights,” a group of state treasurers and other representatives of large shareholders said in a letter to Tesla on Wednesday.

The shareholder representatives, including Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller, and treasurers or comptrollers of Oregon, Illinois and Maryland, oversee pension and investment funds that own hundreds of millions of dollars in Tesla shares. They were among 27 shareholder representatives who signed the letter, including pension funds from Denmark and Sweden and religious groups such as the Friends Fiduciary Corp, a Quaker organisation.