Except you can't just fire the mafioso who threatens you. The board/shareholders can just fire Musk. On the other hand, intimidation/extortion is illegal and t

Except you can't just fire the mafioso who threatens you. The board/shareholders can just fire Musk. On the other hand, intimidation/extortion is illegal and the $50B could be seen as the proceeds of that. I'd say that "fired on-the-spot with cause" should be the expected and legal outcome of the CEO giving himself a $50B bonus. Also one of the expected outcomes of threatening the shareholders. I'm generally of the opinion that the CEO's responsibility to shareholders/board with respect to controversial choices is just to do it with transparency and let them fire him if they disagree. Otherwise, as long as he's not making the company do anything illegal then that can be interpreted as doing his job. But of course, all of this depends on the Cyclopean contracts these people have as well.