CEO of battery startup awarded ‘staggering’ Elon Musk-like pay package

Shareholders of QuantumScape Corp, the solid-state battery startup that went public by way of a blank-check deal final 12 months, are poised to vote on a multibillion-dollar pay package deal for its high govt that one proxy adviser referred to as “staggering” in measurement.

Below the settlement, Chief Government Officer Jagdeep Singh might obtain inventory choices probably worth at as a lot as $2.3 billion, if the corporate meets numerous milestones, in line with estimates by proxy advisory agency Glass Lewis. The package deal can be one of many key matters into account Wednesday at QuantumScape’s annual shareholder assembly.

“The disclosed greenback worth value of the grant is staggering,” Glass Lewis, which urged stockholders to reject the package deal, wrote in a current report. Institutional Shareholder Companies, one other advisory agency, additionally opposed it.

Giant pay packages have gotten more and more widespread amongst fast-growing startups, significantly after the success of Tesla Inc unleashed a wave of money within the electrical automobile market. Such pacts echo the compensation settlement that helped make Tesla CEO Elon Musk the world’s richest individual, mentioned Dayna Harris, a associate at govt compensation agency Farient Advisors. At the very least 15 company leaders obtained awards valued at $100 million or extra final 12 months, a threefold enhance from when Musk obtained his in 2018.

“We strongly consider in setting difficult, hard-to-achieve objectives, after which focusing efforts to make them occur,” QuantumScape wrote in a letter to shareholders defending the package deal. “Because of this we based mostly this new award on stretch objectives and why we gave our key executives the power to share within the upside in a manner that’s commensurate with the problem of reaching them.” Bloomberg