BlackRock voted for proposal to replace Tesla’s Musk with independent chairman | Hacker News Reader

BlackRock voted for proposal to replace Tesla’s Musk with independent chairman

reuters.com

21 pointskgwgk28 comments

Isn't the title misleading? Article says there have been a vote, but the result was against removing him. Title leads you to believe that motion was accepted.

It sounds pretty neutral to me.

It just says how BlackRock voted, nothing about the outcome.

Doesn't "voted to x" imply that x was the result of the vote?

No. It might seem like it because often the actor doing the voting is, for example, an entire legislative body. But that's not the case here.

In the parlance of newspeak i've never seen it used any other way. Its misleading.

Ambiguity of English language to logic in translation. `Congress voted to X` means that X is planned to be done. `I voted for X as President` does not mean that X is planning to be President.

No, “A voted to Y” where A is a voter (or a subset of all voters) means “A cast its vote in support of position Y”, and doesn't say anything about the outcome of the vote.

This is syntactically identical, though disambiguated by semantic context, from the same structure where A identifies the electorate rather than one or more voters that do not make up the whole of the electorate. In that case, “A votes to Y means that the electorate named held a vote in which Y was the winning alternative.”

As this was a Tesla shareholder vote, “Blackrock voted to...” is an example of the first usage, while “Tesla shareholders voted to...” would be an example of the second.

I think it has been changed. It didn't involve Blackrock when I commented.

It was 'BlackRock voted to replace Tesla's Musk with independent chairman' when it was posted, it's still that now. What do you think a non-Blackrock-involving headline would have been?

I am not sure now. But my initial feel was not this. If the title was only about Blackrock, then I was mistaken.

Yes. Especially because ...

> More than 86 million shares voted against the proposal at a shareholder meeting in June, while fewer than 17 million voted in favor, Tesla said.

... and ...

> BlackRock funds are a top-10 Tesla stockholder, controlling nearly 6.5 million of Tesla’s 170 million shares, according to Thomson Reuters data based on public filings.

So who cares how BlackRock voted?

That might make it an uninteresting story but not a misleading title.

> Isn't the title misleading

> Yes. Especially because...

OK. But why do we care how BlackRock voted? What makes them newsworthy, regarding Tesla or whatever? I could google it, but the article doesn't make it very clear.

It's a big shareholder voting for one of those somewhat-off-the-beaten-path proposals that often get zero support from big shareholders. That's about it. It's a pretty basic newswire service report. Does it belong on HN? Probably not. I voted for it not being on the front page!

Thanks. I could have googled that, I know. But I was rather expecting the article to make some argument. It did quote BlackRock about standing for "shareholder value", whatever that is. But I was wondering whether it was just a catfight, or stock manipulation, or whether BlackRock was standing for something fundamental.

> BlackRock is today the world's largest asset manager with $6.3 trillion in assets under management

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackRock

I think a lot of people would consider how BlackRock voted to be newsworthy and follow their lead based on their size and expertise.

Yeah, and that's likely why it's on HN. Or maybe someone has an agenda ;)

I didn't read it like you did, fwiw

No. The title says clearly that one voter voted against Musk.

Additionally, it's clear the vote went the other way, because otherwise the headline would have been very different.

Fuck BlackRock. Aside from their weird anti-2A politics (maybe driven by their fund managers, maybe driven by LPs), now they are trying to kill Tesla?

(Driving Musk out as chairman might not itself cause serious problems, but it could also be a prelude to replacing him, which would be the end of Tesla.). It is pretty telling that their vote was at variance to most of the other institutions.

I was going to say this headline seems geared to mislead. But really it's the existence of the article itself.

Apparently there was a recent vote about replacing Musk as chairman. The vote was overwhelmingly defeated with more than 83% voting to keep Musk. Instead of running an article on this Reuters seemingly chose to run an article highlighting a seemingly random minority holder voting for the replacement, with the result mentioned as a numeric aside. This feels like Spin.

BlackRock is far from a "seemingly random minority holder". They are the largest asset manager in world, with by all accounts has more assets under management than the 10 biggest sovereign wealth funds combined.

As Charmain, not as CEO. Many companies have the Great Leader as CEO and somebody else as chairman, for all kinds of reasons.

Seriously misleading headline. They didn't vote to replace him at all. They voted to add another executive (A COO). He would have remained CEO. Also, the vote failed.

Look at Apple to see how ousting the (genius) founder worked out in 1984. Stupid BlackRock, good their proposal was dismissed.

The vote had nothing to do with ousting Musk. He would have remained CEO no matter what.

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