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Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk
- thelastidiot 8y agoWhy did they named this digwit as Chairman? Telstra is a worse company I can think of in Australia.
- NamTaf 8y agoThey’ve... seen Telstra’s share price, right?
- roenxi 8y agoTelstra's major asset is a large copper telecommunications network. The government, as a matter of policy, is tearing that network up and replacing it with a publicly owned fiber network. This is not a great situation for Telstra, to say the least. This has been going on for a while, but a hazy memory suggests there have been shenanigans afoot regarding cash compensation for the damage done - that could cause all sorts of gyrations in the share price. At any rate, the market has become so political I wouldn't read too much in to Telstra's share price without having a detailed understanding of the situation. The board is not in control of the political process.
- threeseed 8y agoYour assessment isn't correct at all. Telstra sold the copper network to NBN in 2014. And NBN isn't replacing that network at all. They are still using it for FTTC, FTTN and FTTB which will make up the large bulk of the NBN rollout along with HFC which they acquired from Optus. And it's widely known in the industry that Telstra is positioning itself to potentially buy back the NBN given they recently split the company into two: Retail and Operations.
- shasheene 8y agoForgive me if I have any misconceptions or out-of-date knowledge, but while Testra owned the copper telephone network (including, I believe, the copper cabling within everybody's houses), it's only FTTN that uses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 much of the copper network at all: the only copper cabling in FTTC is between the end-user's premises and the small underground pit on every block (a very short stretch for vectored VDSL2 signals at 100 Mbit/s duplex). FTTB is fibre optic cabling to an apartment building, so the only copper cabling there is within the building. (Side note: From my past research, FTTC with vectored VDSL2 seemed like a great cost-effective technology: leveraging a small amount of pre-existing copper cabling to save digging up every garden in Australia to install the final few meters fibre-optic cabling, with the optional upgrade path to full FTTP being allowed to be done at any time into the future, if a households willing to pay for the upgrade.)
- threeseed 8y agoI 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 so that NBN is looking at whether to go into people's houses to fix up the wiring. FTTC is definitely a better option than FTTN especially since with G.Fast you are able to attain 1Gbit/s speeds.
- paranoidrobot 8y ago> 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.
- roenxi 8y ago> Telstra sold the copper network to NBN in 2014. Yeah, hence the big cash payout. 2014 is associated with the peak share price by 1-2 years, so they might have been given a big cash infusion, share price jumps, returned it to the shareholders slowly over a couple of years because they specialise in network maintenance which is no longer a competitive advantage. > They are still using it for FTTC, FTTN and FTTB which will make up the large bulk of the NBN rollout along with HFC which they acquired from Optus. My parents house was connected to the NBN, their copper landline was disconnected, as was everyone on their street (they had no choice in the matter). And FTTC, FTTN and FTTB all involve ripping a lot of copper out of the ground to be replaced by fiber.
- NamTaf 8y agoIt's been an issue long before the NBN. Even after the dot-com bust, through the ADSL roll-out era where their wholesale arm had a stranglehold on the network, plus the high speed cable network from Foxtel, they've consistently mismanaged themselves and failed to deliver for shareholders despite their incredible advantages relative to other players. For example, the T2 float in 1999 was done at about $7.50. It took until about 2014 for the dividend yields to stack up enough that when combined with the share price, T2 shareholders could break even in nominal (not real) terms. Telstra's management, given its position of advantage in the Aussie telco industry, has been a shambles for a lot longer than the NBN.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoI 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 get the order cancelled and my money back. I gave up with that. And went in to a Telstra owned Telstra store and politely but sternly demanded my money back by asking the managed to call his escalation point(s) until he found someone who could authorise the return of my money. After half an hour he was asking me to leave and I repeatedly said "not until I have my money back". I wasn't being threatening at all, rather I was pleading with him to understand my position. He picked up his mobile and said he was dialling the police. That's how Telstra treats it's customers.
- dwd 8y agoShenanigans is an understatement. The government "compensated" Telstra for giving up it's network monopoly and after dropping Labor's plan of fiber to the property for existing connections bought the copper network anyway so Telstra double dipped. I've already had my NBN connection out for a whole week due to a failure in the copper.
- sytelus 8y agoSo previously a private company monopolized the business and now government would monopolize it. I wonder which one is the worse...
- jdck1326 8y agoThe private company one is worse
- NamTaf 8y agoThe private company was privatised after previously being a government run organisaion. They floated it to get a bunch of income, but the nature of large infrastructure is that it's incredibly costly to build a new network. Thus, Telstra simultaneously acted as a private company (trying to deliver returns to shareholders) whilst being this sort of Frankenstein's monster of regulated wholesale monopoly, which hamstrung Australian broadband development something incredible.
- threeseed 8y agoWhat many people don't know as well was that Telstra was subject to a Structural Separation Undertaking which meant that their Operations arm of the business would treat their Retail arm as like a seperate company. Otherwise it would be unfair for competitors. Except that this was routinely broken meaning the entire telecommunications market was constantly distorted. It really was the worst of all worlds.
- swarnie_ 8y agoWho are "They" and what does the share price have to do with a new Chairman being appointed?
- tinco 8y agoThe rest of the board, and supposedly Musk is being replaced to get a little bit more financial responsibility in Tesla. If Ms. Denholm has a bad track record, then that might not be good news, but I would assume Ms. Denholm was not an impulsive choice, and the board has good reason to seperate her abilities from Telstra's bad performance.
- Uberphallus 8y agoIt's a self fulfilling prophecy: companies that aren't doing good hire certain C-execs to turn things around, and they don't always succeed. Robyn in particular was hired in the middle of current Telstra drop.
- avip 8y agoAnd you'll asses his "financial responsibility" based on the short-term movements of a stock in a regulation-first market?
- tinco 8y agoI'm not assessing anything, I think the guy is the greatest person ever put on this planet. I'm just saying what I think the board is doing.
- throwaway0255 8y ago> 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.
- 8y ago
- Majestic121 8y ago"The announcement late Wednesday comes ahead of a Nov. 13 deadline that was part of Mr. Musk’s settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to end claims he misled investors. That deal required Mr. Musk to step aside as head of the board for three years in favor of an independent chairman." He is being forced out due to legal issues, I don't think it's a statement from the board against Musk specifically
- _Codemonkeyism 8y agoDenholm!
- owaislone 8y agoOffer them a nice cup of tea...
- _Codemonkeyism 8y agoI hope he doesn't find his dads old service revolver.
- neonate 8y agohttp://archive.is/qrhp8 http://archive.is/qrhp8
- denzil_correa 8y ago> Ms. Denholm, the chief financial officer of Australian telecommunications firm Telstra Corp., has served on Tesla’s board since 2014 but has fewer ties to Mr. Musk than most of the company’s directors. Yin and yang
- andromedavision 8y agoI call John Sculley.
- tomhoward 8y agoHe was CEO; she's chair of the board. No valid comparison.
- andromedavision 8y agoI just meant as a general trajectory. The board is losing faith in the founder. Not a good sign. Rarely ever is. Side note: I'm pretty sure we've interacted somewhere else online. Either on HN or reddit.
- ec109685 8y agoTesla needed a new chairman as part of their SEC settlemant for Musk’s tweet.
- andromedavision 8y agoWell aware of that. They (board) were a tad too eager to see this happen and only 'supported' him begrudgingly.
- louismerlin 8y agoAwesome Recode Decode interview featuring Musk from last week : https://www.recode.net/2018/11/2/18053428/recode-decode-full-podcast-transcript-elon-musk-tesla-spacex-boring-company-kara-swisher https://www.recode.net/2018/11/2/18053428/recode-decode-full...
- spuz 8y agoI'm not sure how you can like this interview. It's extremely combative and the questions from the interviewer seem childish like she is deliberately not listening to Elon's answers. I'm no Elon fan but this is impossible to listen to.
- htk 8y agoKara Swisher is like that sometimes, and I don't like it too. On Steve Jobs last interview to her and Mossberg, Mossberg was trying to capture how Steve thinks, but Kara was only interested in the current event of apple dropping google on the maps app.
- jypepin 8y agoSometimes? She is always like that. Once she has someone in her grip, she won't let go, ever. I don't understand how she can be so one-sided as a journalist, if we can even call what she does journalism. A few years ago she decided she'd get Uber down. Oh boy. Every single thing she was writing was worst than a People magazine article about the Kardashians. 0 objectivity. Straight up fake news, etc.
- whtswrong 8y ago>0 objectivity. Straight up fake news Please post a link to an article written by Swisher on Uber that had absolutely "zero objectivity". This trend of calling articles you disagree with or mediocre journalism "fake news" is frightening.
- deepGem 8y agoI really liked how Musk handled himself. Combative and stern at times, especially when Kara Swisher said she doesn’t own an electric car :). Overall not a great interview. She kept harping on Model 3 production. I hate it when interviewers try to dissect the past. It’s more exciting to talk about the future, get Musk thinking.. but no let’s just dig about the past.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoI 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 get the order cancelled and my money back. I gave up with that. And went in to a Telstra owned Telstra store and politely but sternly demanded my money back by asking the managed to call his escalation point(s) until he found someone who could authorise the return of my money. After half an hour he was asking me to leave and I repeatedly said "not until I have my money back". I wasn't being threatening at all, rather I was pleading with him to understand my position. He picked up his mobile and said he was dialling the police. That's how Telstra treats it's customers. That's what Denholm is bring to the table: the worst customer experience in Australia with regard to telecommunications. That's not just my opinion, Telstra has repeatedly been voted as the worst customer telco related experience in Australia for decades.
- spiderfarmer 8y agoShe was the CFO there not the CEO, how does this reflect on her performance?
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoShe's signing off on paying for the delivery of incredibly bad customer service. Outsource everything to call centres where the agents have no authority to resolve an out of the ordinary issue and have difficulty escalating out of the ordinary issues to someone who can fix it. How does the operation of a business not reflect on the whole C-suite? Who else is responsible?
- logicchains 8y agoIf you paid them and they refuse to deliver, couldn't you sue them for fraud?
- 8y ago
- godelmachine 8y agoShe does not even have a Wikipedia page.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- logicchains 8y agoAnother 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.
- ethbro 8y ago"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/Telstra-announces-resignation-of-Robyn-Denholm-as-Chief-Financial-Officer https://www.telstra.com.au/aboutus/media/media-releases/Tels... She was there < 2 years.
- justtopost 8y agoMy 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.
- cptskippy 8y ago> 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. Tesla folding would be the worse thing that could possible happen for EV adoption. No other successful car company is fully committed or deeply invested in EVs. GM and Nissan are making compliance cars that permit them to continue to make the same shitty ICE cars while still meeting fleet emissions standards. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that if the Trump administration keeps it's momentum then those compliance rules would vanish and GM would just fold up shop on the Bolt and possibly even the Volt. Tesla kicking competitors in the nuts on performance while showing everyone that EVs are viable business model is the only thing pushing the rest of the automotive industry forward. If Tesla went under then we'd see GM saying "See, EVs just aren't viable with the technology we have today."
- qubax 8y agoIn 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.
- threeseed 8y agoThat'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.
- qubax 8y ago> 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.
- evasote 8y agoThe chairman is typically elected by the board, but there's a lot of variety. Some smaller ones just make a schedule early to basically rotate through members for two years periods. I think there's a lot of variety in this part depending on the company, board, shareholders, etc.
- Svexav 8y agoI doubt Musk is stupid enough to do this. I’m sure Tesla is complying with the order.
- ChrisArchitect 8y ago[does double take] Denholm? #ITCrowd
- mindcrime 8y agoHave you tried turning it off and back on again?