Tesla Shareholders Approve Elon Musk’s $45 Billion Pay Package

Tesla shareholders have reaffirmed a pay award of more than $45 billion for Elon Musk, the chief executive, after it was thrown out in a legal challenge.

The vote result, announced at Tesla’s annual meeting at its headquarters in Austin, Texas, on Thursday, is a strong sign that shareholders still believe in Mr. Musk and it could persuade the judge who voided the award to reinstate it.

Support for the pay plan will come as a relief to Mr. Musk’s admirers, who feared that rejection would prompt him to spend less time managing Tesla or even quit. The vote was a setback for investors who had hoped it would send a message about the accountability of chief executives and the limits of executive pay.

The outcome may also help Mr. Musk qualify as the world’s richest person, worth well over $200 billion.

Tesla shares rose on Thursday ahead of the official announcement of the results after Mr. Musk said on X that the pay plan was passing by a wide margin.

Tesla’s board had called for the vote in response to a ruling by Chancellor Kathaleen St. J. McCormick of the Court of Chancery in Delaware, where Tesla is registered as a corporation. In January, Chancellor McCormick agreed with a group of disenchanted Tesla shareholders who contended in a lawsuit that the 2018 pay package was wildly excessive.

The board hoped that shareholder approval a second time might help address Chancellor McCormick’s finding that a 2018 vote in favor of the pay package was tainted because members of the board failed to disclose conflicts of interest stemming from their personal and financial ties to Mr. Musk.

But legal experts questioned whether a yes vote would cause Chancellor McCormick to revise her ruling. “It doesn’t change a thing,” said Charles Elson, founding director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.

Tesla has acknowledged that the vote would not necessarily resolve the case.

Shareholders also approved a proposal to move Tesla’s corporate registration to Texas, a reaction to what Mr. Musk and the board perceived as unfair treatment by Delaware courts. The move will have no effect on the Delaware case.

They rejected a measure proposed by shareholders that calls for Tesla not to interfere with workers trying to organize a union, and to bargain in good faith if they do. Mr. Musk has often expressed hostility toward organized labor. In Sweden, Tesla has refused to negotiate with mechanics who work for the company and have been on strike for nearly six months.

After the results were announced, Mr. Musk took the stage and spoke about his plans to build a vast fleet of self-driving cars that, he said, would revolutionize transportation. “We are not just opening a new chapter for Tesla,” he said, “we are starting a new book.”

The compensation vote pitted those who regard Mr. Musk as a genius who has revolutionized the auto industry against those antagonized by his polarizing statements on X and recent slumps in Tesla sales and earnings.

Robyn Denholm, the chair of the Tesla board, argued that investors became wealthy because of Mr. Musk’s leadership, and that the company was obligated to give him what he was…