Larry Ellison joins Tesla's board as "independent" director
Tesla is naming Oracle's Larry Ellison and an executive from Walgreens to its board as part of a settlement with U.S. regulators who demanded more oversight of CEO Elon Musk.
The company said Friday that Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson are the new independent directors, effective immediately.
Wilson-Thompson spent 17 years at Kellogg and is currently an executive with Walgreens Boots Alliance. While Ellison is the founder and executive chairman of Oracle, the database-management giant. He recently disclosed a large personal stake in Tesla.
"I am very close friends to Elon Musk and I am a very big investor in Tesla," Ellison said at a financial analyst meeting at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in October, according to CNBC.
The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Tesla CEO Elon Musk with misleading investors in August with a tweet that said he had "funding secured" for taking the company private. The two board members are part of the agreement reached with the SEC.
Tesla's stock price rose almost 3% in the first moments of trading Friday, to around $325 a share. Oracle's stock price was flat at the opening.