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Tesla awards its new Chief Financial Officer over $46 million worth of stock options

If you were wondering how Tesla managed to hire away Google’s longtime Vice President of Finance Jason Wheeler, now you know. In a SEC filing published yesterday, Tesla disclosed its new CFO’s stock option plan of ~200,000 shares – worth over $46 million.

The shares were issued on Monday at an exercise price of $218.58. Tesla’s stock rallied this week and closed at $234 on Wednesday. If Wheeler’s shares were available to vest right now (2 weeks into his role), he would already stand to make over $3 million, but it’s not the case.

One quarter of Wheeler’s shares will vest in November 2016 and then about 4000 shares each following month.

Although generous, Wheeler’s stock option plan is dwarfed by Elon Musk’s 5,274,901 stock options under his ‘CEO Grant’.

Wheeler joins Tesla after 13 years at Google where he was Vice President of Finance and led Google’s global finance function. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a bachelor’s degree in finance from Colorado State University, where he graduated summa cum laude.

The Google veteran is replacing Deepak Ahuja who was Tesla’s CFO since 2008. Ahuja announced his retirement this summer, but he is staying with the company for a few months to oversee the transition and presumably the end of the year finances.

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Avatar for Fred Lambert Fred Lambert

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