Following months of pressure from investors, Tesla has added two new independent directors to its board. James Murdoch, CEO of 21st Century Fox, and Linda Johnson Rice, chairman and CEO of Johnson Publishing, will join the nine-member board as directors with no prior relationship to Tesla or its CEO Elon Musk.
CtW Investment Group, which works with union pension funds, called on Tesla to add at least two independent directors—and pushed for additional steps, including a declassification of the board that would allow stockholders to elect its members annually and a ban on permitting two family members to serve on the board concurrently (Kimbal Musk, Elon Musk’s brother, is a member of the board). The suggestions provoked a testy response from the board’s chairman:
Besides, I already said we'd add more independent members during SCTY merger. Will announce soon, but this group has nothing to do with it.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 12, 2017
Murdoch, son of media mogul Rupert, has held multiple roles within his father’s empire—including head of European satellite broadcaster Sky—before taking the reins at Fox in 2015.
Johnson Rice will be the second woman on Tesla’s board after Robyn Denholm, COO of Australian telecom Telstra, who is also the board’s first African-American member.