Tesla Names New Accounting Chief - The Wall Street Journal

Electric-car maker Tesla will grant new Accounting Chief Vaibhav Taneja $6 million in stock options and $2 million in restricted stock. Photo: jason lee/Reuters

Kimberly Chin

The Wall Street Journal

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@MsKimberlyChin
kimberly.chin@wsj.com

Updated March 14, 2019 11:33 a.m. ET

Tesla Inc. TSLA 0.78% said it has named Vaibhav Taneja to the role of chief accounting officer as the electric-car maker looks to build up its C-suite team amid a wave of departures over the past year.

Mr. Taneja succeeds Dave Morton, who left in September after less than a month on the job due to the level of public attention and the higher-than-expected work pace at the company.

Moving Parts

Tesla has had several executive changes in the past year.

February 2018: President of Sales and Services Jon McNeill leaves
March 2018: Chief Accounting Officer Eric Branderiz leaves
July 2018: Engineering Chief Doug Field leaves
August 2018: Dave Morton becomes Chief Accounting Officer
September 2018: Dave Morton leaves, Chief People Officer Gabrielle Toledano leaves
December 2018: General Counsel Todd Maron leaves, replaced by Dane Butswinkas
January 2019: Chief Financial Officer Deepak Ahuja retires*, stays on as adviser, replaced by Zach Kirkhorn
February 2019: Dane Butswinkas leaves, replaced with Jonathan Chang
March 2019: Vaibhav Taneja becomes Chief Accounting Officer
*Mr. Ahuja also retired as CFO in late 2015, returning to the role in 2017.

Mr. Taneja has been Tesla’s corporate controller since May 2018. Prior to that, he was the assistant corporate controller and served as an executive at SolarCity Corp., the solar energy services arm of Tesla.

Tesla said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Thursday it will grant Mr. Taneja $6 million in stock options and $2 million in restricted stock that will vest over a four-year period as part of the appointment.

In January, Tesla named Zach Kirkhorn, who has worked at Tesla since 2010 as a senior finance analyst but who was relatively unknown to investors, as its chief financial officer. He had succeeded Deepak Ahuja, a longtime confidant of Chief Executive Elon Musk. He had been at Tesla since 2010.

The company said in the filing that Mr. Kirkhorn would be granted $12 million in stock options and $4 million in restricted stock which would vest in four years.

Mr. Taneja will report to Mr. Kirkhorn, the company said.

Shares of Tesla were up 0.9% in Thursday morning trading.

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Write to Kimberly Chin at kimberly.chin@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
Tesla’s former president of sales and services is Jon McNeill. A text box about Tesla’s executive changes misspelled the executive’s last name. (March 14, 2019)

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