Liam Denning, Columnist

Elon Musk Doesn’t Need a COO. He Needs a New Board

Without this key reform, a new corporate officer isn’t going to help Tesla.

September 13, 2018 at 9:00 AM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

Photo illustration: 731; Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

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This article is part of the September 17, 2018 issue of businessweek.

After what’s been quite a summer for Elon Musk and Tesla Inc., the company he runs, the strain is not so much showing as being broadcast (and tweeted) live. But don’t worry. This isn’t the start of a psychological profile of an embattled entrepreneur.

This story is about something else: practical help in the C-suite. Musk’s recent behavior—not least August’s bizarre buyout deal that wasn’t—has revived calls for Tesla to appoint a chief operating officer or someone similar to lighten the burden of disrupting cars, energy, and the rest of it (and maybe give Musk some extra time to sleep).