The head of New York City’s pension funds called for a shareholder lawsuit against Tesla, accusing Elon Musk, its chief executive, of causing the company’s shares to plunge because of his actions to slash spending and the federal work force as head of the Trump administration’s cost-cutting effort.
In a letter sent late Monday to the New York City Law Department and reviewed by The New York Times, Brad Lander, the comptroller who oversees the city’s five public pension funds, said the highly contested cost-cutting measures by Mr. Musk’s initiative, the Department of Government Efficiency, are hurting Tesla’s stock.
He accused Mr. Musk, the world’s richest person, of “effectively quitting his job at Tesla” and “promoting policies” that have been harmful to Tesla’s business.
“As the market has learned the truth, bit by bit, that Musk has in fact abandoned Tesla in favor of DOGE, where he was taking actions that alienated Tesla’s consumer base and causing Tesla’s sales to severely decline, the share price has dropped in response,” Mr. Lander wrote in a letter to Muriel Goode-Trufant, the corporation counsel for New York City. The letter was seen as a likely precursor to a lawsuit because Ms. Goode-Trufant is the lawyer for the pension funds.
Donald J. Trump did not mention Mr. Robinson once at a campaign event in Wilmington,66jogo Melhores Slots no Brasil N.C., on Saturday, and several Trump fans who attended said they understood why it was necessary to distance Mr. Trump from Mr. Robinson. The former president endorsed Mr. Robinson in March and held a fund-raiser for him at his home in Palm Beach, Fla., last year.
Mr. Trump would be 82 on Election Day in 2028, older than President Biden is now. This year’s election is already his third consecutive time being the Republican nominee, after he won in 2016 and lost in 2020. In the modern party system, only Franklin Delano Roosevelt has ever received a major party’s nomination four times, though a handful have matched Mr. Trump with three.
As a result, the letter said, the value of the pension system’s Tesla holdings has dropped by 34 percent from Dec. 31 to March 28, to $831 million from $1.26 billion.
Mr. Lander, in an interview, said that Tesla had emphasized the importance of Mr. Musk’s involvement to the electric car maker’s success, but had falsely represented that he spends “significant time on the company and is highly active” in its management. He said that he hoped the lawsuit will help recover some of the losses and compel Tesla to make policy and governance changes.
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