It would be difficult for anyone to manage the affairs of Tesla under the “conditions that Elon would want and with the team that he has,” Tesla (TSLA) shareholder Ross Gerber has said.
Gerber, the CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management in reaction to advertisers fleeing Twitter – now X – over Musk’s endorsement of antisemitic posts.
Gerber, who also said Elon’s comments are hurting Tesla during an interview with Yahoo Finance, pointed out that the best person that could have stepped in to run Tesla “was Zach Kirkhorn who’s now gone.”
Asked what could be done to stop advertising partners from fleeing X, even though Elon hired a new CEO for X, but that seemed not to have worked, the CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management said even if Elon decided to have “some sort of COO-CEO partnership”, his best choice is gone.
Succession plan may be major problem of Tesla
Gerber said the wealthiest man has been running Tesla like a personal company, which could affect the company’s succession plan.
“I mean, it’s Elon’s company, it’s basically like a private company. The board isn’t going to do anything for the benefit of shareholders.
“So, you know, quite frankly, I think Tesla shareholders need to assess that we’re on this boat, and we have no control of the boat,” he told Julie Hyman of Yahoo Finance (here for the full video interview).
He believes that any comment the X owner makes regarding advertisers would have dire consequences on Tesla and his other companies.
Reviewing what Elon said in DealBook, Gerber said his (Elon) outburst on X advertisers dominated discussion “instead of Cybertruck,” thereby taking away a lot of healthy discussions from the Tesla event.
“I’m sorry, it’s sad to me that everybody’s talking about him cursing out advertisers versus the Cybertruck, which is really the story. It’s an incredible piece of technology,” he said.
