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Robyn Denholm has pocketed roughly $180 million selling shares over the past six months and still has plenty of options she can yet exercise. The New York Times published an analysis showing she has earned five times as much as UnitedHealth Group's Stephen Hemsley, the next non-executive chair who most often liquidates stock.
Tesla board chair Robyn Denholm once again finds herself in the crosshairs of controversy over her string of recent stock sales.
Fortune has regularly reported on the various transactions, in which the Australian has made over $180 million over the past six months—often times selling when investors were still reeling as the company's core car business entered its worst crisis in years.
On Tuesday, roughly a week after her most recent stock sale, the New York Times ran an article comparing and contrasting it to other non-executive chairs and discovered her compensation is far larger than even her best-paid peers.
It found that the $530 million in total she has collected from the sale of Tesla stock since becoming chair in 2018 dwarfs the next closest non-executive chair, UnitedHealth Group’s Stephen Hemsley, who earned over $100 million over a similar period.
Tesla did not respond to Fortune's request for comment.
Non-executive board chairs like Denholm and Hemsley focus primarily on governance issues, providing broad oversight and ensuring the C-suite tasked with running the day-to-day operations act in the best interests of all shareholders.
Yet if there is one major criticism Denholm constantly faces even among Tesla’s long-term shareholders, it’s how little influence she wields over CEO Elon Musk.
During the height of the boycotts and backlash—when insiders like Denholm and James Murdoch were selling—the company's retail shareholders were begging her to take action and reassure them that their anguish was being heard in the board. She even received crowdsourced suggestions from the community about what the board could do to soothe some of the more frayed nerves. A simple thanks as reply was the only answer they got.
President Trump's "first buddy" has been blamed for inflicting potentially historic and irreversible damage to the Tesla brand this year.
Denholm understands Musk cannot nor should not be controlled, say supporters
Apart from her stock sales, Denholm is rarely visible. She emerged from the background only once last year to lobby for Musk’s pay package, the largest in human history and worth over $101 billion at the current stock price.