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Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk

wsj.com

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Re: Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk

#51

Post by threeseed »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #28
throwaway0255 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The rest of the board, and supposedly Musk is being replaced to get a little bit more financial responsibility in Tesla. He’s being replaced as consideration for a settlement agreement with the SEC. It seems likely Tesla chose Denholm because they have a bad PR problem, and it will be difficult for media companies to portray her as a villain.

Difficult to portray her as a villain? Telstra is widely regarded as the worst company in Australia to deal with as a residential customer.

There are far worse companies than Telstra e.g. banks, life insurance.

And she was the CFO so she isn't responsible for customer service.

Re: Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk

#52

Post by threeseed »

qubax wrote: post #44

In most companies, the CEO reports to the chairman of the board and the chairman of the board reports to the shareholders ( particularly the major shareholders ). The biggest TSLA shareholder is elon musk and many of the large shareholders are friends/backers of elon musk. So this is a purely superficial move for optics. She gets a nice sinecure with a fat paycheck. Musk gets the feds off his back.

That's not how it works.

The CEO reports to the board. The Chairman reports to the board. The board reports to the shareholders but only indirectly via shareholder meetings where votes will decide on renumeration, board composition etc.

Re: Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk

#53

Post by ethbro »

logicchains wrote: post #42

Another Australian here, surprised to hear Tesla selecting someone with a background in such a reviled (in Australia) company, Telstra. It's like if Microsoft had picked a former Oracle exec to replace Balmer, except in a world where Oracle was also hated by the average Joe Blo, not just techies.

"Robyn joined Telstra in January 2017 as Chief Operations Officer (COO) and has been in the role of CFO since 1 October 2018."

https://www.telstra.com.au/aboutus/media/media-releases/Tels...

She was there < 2 years.

Re: Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk

#54

Post by Svexav »

qubax wrote: post #44

In most companies, the CEO reports to the chairman of the board and the chairman of the board reports to the shareholders ( particularly the major shareholders ). The biggest TSLA shareholder is elon musk and many of the large shareholders are friends/backers of elon musk. So this is a purely superficial move for optics. She gets a nice sinecure with a fat paycheck. Musk gets the feds off his back.

I doubt Musk is stupid enough to do this. I’m sure Tesla is complying with the order.

Re: Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk

#55

Post by justtopost »

logicchains wrote: post #42

Another Australian here, surprised to hear Tesla selecting someone with a background in such a reviled (in Australia) company, Telstra. It's like if Microsoft had picked a former Oracle exec to replace Balmer, except in a world where Oracle was also hated by the average Joe Blo, not just techies.

My thoughts exactly. Telstra is a step below what even Comcast is in the USA. Unless their plan is to ruthlessly extract capitol at the expense of the customer, this is bad signalling at best, and more likely a shift to profit over vision. I'm honestly hoping they fold soon so someone can use the momentum they created as they seem intent on squandering it and their tech. Still waiting for the right to reapir your own car Tesla.

Re: Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk

#56

Post by paranoidrobot »

threeseed wrote: post #48
shasheene wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive me if I have any misconceptions or out-of-date knowledge, but while Testra owned the copper telephone network (including, I believe, the copper cabling within everybody's houses), it's only FTTN that uses the traditional copper network -- as it uses copper cabling between the premises and the node (with the node being those above-ground grey pillar box in every suburb, I believe). FTTC and FTTB don't use the…

I can't remember where Telstra's ownership stopped whether it was to the first in-house socket or to the curb. It's all a bit irrelevant now as NBN owns the network and its problems. Because what NBN is finding is that the last bit of copper is actually responsible for a lot of the problems. And so even though FTTC for example should be seeing significantly better results than FTTN in fact it isn't the case. So much…

> I can't remember where Telstra's ownership stopped whether it was to the first in-house socket or to the curb.

It's at the Network Boundary Point (NBP), which varies from premises to premises.

Free-standing houses that are more than 5-10 years old, it'll probably be the first socket. For newer houses, there's a NBP that's either on the side of the house, or near the edge of the property.

For Strata / Multiple-Dwelling Properties, it may be a Distribution Frame.

Way back in the 90s, before Telecom Australia became Telstra, the ownership of all the internal wiring (defined as anything from the NBP onwards) was transferred to the owner of the premises. This was part of the competition stuff - allowing competitive bids on builds for wiring new premises, business, etc.

Re: Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk

#57

Post by threeseed »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #29

I posted this as a response to another comment, but I think it deserves a top level comment: I just want to chime in here to say: when I recently tried to purchase an iPhone SE from Telstra's online store, the device was out of stock. They couldn't tell me when they expected to have it back in stock, or it was being end-of-lifed. No straight answers. I spent 15 hours, over two weeks, on the phone to Telstra trying to…

I've worked at Telstra so can shed some light on this.

1. Harassing retail staff for what is a corporate process problem is really inappropriate and pointless. I'm not surprised they called the police. Instead you should have called the TIO, ACCC or escalated via email.

2. The customer service issues at Telstra are incredibly deep and complex. It's a 40+ year old company where some of the processes still rely on dot matrix printers and faxes and there are thousands of IT systems. It's a mess. Call centres within Australia would do nothing to change the NPS which is why they were so easy to off-shore in the first place.

3. Telstra may not have a great customer service reputation. But they are one of the most revered telcos globally. They transitioned to 4G better than anyone and had the fastest network on the planet for quite some time. And they will do it again with 5G.

4. Denholm isn't hired to run customer service for Tesla. She was the CFO of a 40,000 odd employee highly technical, multi-faceted company e.g. their own venture fund. She also spent 7 years at Toyota so she has some automative experience as well as strong technical background.

Re: Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk

#58

Post by Angostura »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #29

I posted this as a response to another comment, but I think it deserves a top level comment: I just want to chime in here to say: when I recently tried to purchase an iPhone SE from Telstra's online store, the device was out of stock. They couldn't tell me when they expected to have it back in stock, or it was being end-of-lifed. No straight answers. I spent 15 hours, over two weeks, on the phone to Telstra trying to…

> That's what Denholm is bring to the table: the worst customer experience in Australia with regard to telecommunications

Being charitable, its possible that the reason she was there for less than 2 years was that she disliked the culture and found herself unable to change it.

Re: Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk

#59

Post by haser_au »

logicchains wrote: post #42

Another Australian here, surprised to hear Tesla selecting someone with a background in such a reviled (in Australia) company, Telstra. It's like if Microsoft had picked a former Oracle exec to replace Balmer, except in a world where Oracle was also hated by the average Joe Blo, not just techies.

She's also ex-Juniper and Sun Microsystems.

Source: https://au.linkedin.com/in/robyn-denholm-a807795

Re: Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk

#60

Post by qubax »

threeseed wrote: post #52
qubax wrote: post #44

In most companies, the CEO reports to the chairman of the board and the chairman of the board reports to the shareholders ( particularly the major shareholders ). The biggest TSLA shareholder is elon musk and many of the large shareholders are friends/backers of elon musk. So this is a purely superficial move for optics. She gets a nice sinecure with a fat paycheck. Musk gets the feds off his back.

That's not how it works. The CEO reports to the board. The Chairman reports to the board. The board reports to the shareholders but only indirectly via shareholder meetings where votes will decide on renumeration, board composition etc.

> The Chairman reports to the board.

The chairman is the head of the board. He doesn't report to the board. He, along with the rest of the directors, reports to the shareholders.

The chairman has a fiduciary duty to the shareholders, not to his fellow board members.

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