By Nick Bonyhady

To the extent that is possible for a mercurial billionaire like Elon Musk to have a boss, his boss is Robyn Denholm. Where he is the chief executive of Tesla, she is the chair of the board. Where Musk lives in America, Denholm lives in Sydney. While he is brash and impulsive, Denholm is professional and deliberate.

She does not tweet.

But she has ridden the Tesla rollercoaster to the top of Australia’s technology industry and a fortune from the company’s shares. But from a peak of more than $US1.2 trillion ($A1.77 trillion) in November 2021, many times the value of competing carmakers such as Toyota or General Motors, Tesla has lost about 70 per cent of its value this year. Its worth – still enormous at $US381 billion on Friday – is down by about half since Musk agreed to buy Twitter, the short form social media firm, in April.

Tesla chair Robyn Denholm has ridden the electric vehicle maker’s rollercoaster to fame and fortune, but also faced questions about its governance.Credit:Olive and Maeve

That transaction, which secured Musk a place in a ceaseless news cycle as he sacked staff, tangled with regulators, and made chaotic attempts to turn around the social media firm’s finances, left analysts covering Tesla in despair.

Wedbush Securities’ Daniel Ives, the best-known, called the purchase a “historically horrific move” because it distracted Musk and prompted him to sell Tesla stock to fund the transaction despite suggesting he would not, denting confidence.

Earlier this month, Ives told Denholm and the Tesla board to rein in Musk. As Tesla’s share price continued to fall, Ives went on American television this week to ask Musk and the Tesla board for three things: the rapid appointment of a fresh CEO for Twitter, as Musk has promised; an end to “lofty” financial forecasts and the issuing of more realistic guidance; and written guarantees from Musk about when and if he will sell stock.

So far, the board has not responded.

Denholm’s Australian spokeswoman declined interview requests, saying she was travelling, and did not respond to emailed questions. Tesla’s press office did not respond to requests for comment sent via email.

Robyn Mary Assunta Denholm, 59, was born in 1963 to parents who had arrived in Australia the decade before. Growing up, she worked in the family’s western Sydney petrol station. Then economics at the University of Sydney, a job at the accountancy Arthur Anderson, then Toyota and in the mid-1990s, computer gear manufacturer Sun Microsystems. The firm, which was then a giant in the industry, offered her a role in America. The decision was not easy, Denholm told a Chief Executive Women event earlier this year.

“[I was a] newly single mum, with a 13- and eight-year-old and about to move them 10,000 miles away from our family, away from support, to take on a role I wasn’t sure I could do,” Denholm said.

She made the move, went further up with Sun and then, in 2007, moved to Juniper Networks, a major network equipment maker, where she became chief financial and operating officer. Had Denholm stayed in this path, steadily climbing corporate ladders, there is every chance she would have remained a highly accomplished but anonymous figure.

Things began to change in 2014.

On November 15 this year, Denholm was sitting alone in a room in Tel Aviv, Israel, explaining to a court in the US state of Delaware via video link how she came to be the chair of Tesla. Her testimony began with a US executive called Brad Buss, who was on Tesla’s board. “I’d known Brad for a little while, as we were both sitting on a [chief financial officer] roundtable,” Denholm recalled, according to a transcript. “And he asked me if I was interested in joining the board, and I said to him, yes, potentially. And he disclosed that it was Tesla.” Denholm was given a seat in 2014. She was the first woman on the company’s board.

Elon Musk, in cowboy hat, launches a new Tesla facility. From fancy dress and intemperate outbursts online to flirting with conspiracy theories, Musk’s antics have won him legions of admirers who see him as an independent-minded genius. Others think he is a dangerous fool.Credit:AP

She was there when, in 2018, the board agreed to a pay packet that could net Musk a staggering $US55 billion over a decade if a series of ambitious company milestones were met, which is why, in part, Denholm was defending the agreement in a Delaware court. A minor shareholder had alleged the board had not been independent of Musk when it struck the deal with him and misled investors, a claim the board denies.

Denholm told the court that the board needed to find a way to motivate Musk to accomplish difficult feats for the company that only he could do, giving an insight into wrangling the billionaire’s enormous ambitions.

“And in order for him to, you know, focus on those [goals at Tesla], he needed to assemble an amount of wealth, if you like, so that it could fuel his other aspirations around interplanetary travel and those types of things,” Denholm said.

She would become more central to Tesla. In late 2018, Tesla and Musk settled a fraud claim brought by the US Securities and Investments Commission after Musk tweeted, incorrectly, that he had secured funding to take Tesla private at $US420 a share (a cannabis reference). As part of the settlement, Musk had to step down as chair. Denholm, who by then was chief financial officer of Telstra, was voted in. She quit the telecommunications firm to do the role.

It was lucrative, but Tesla was facing production problems and bleeding cash. Then with Musk committed to be chief executive for a decade and Denholm in the chair (along with rock bottom interest rates and a growing alarm at climate change), the company soared for years. It became profitable.

Electric cars rolled off its production lines at greater pace, putting pressure on rival firms that made petrol vehicles. Tesla appeared one of only a handful of Western technology firms to operate successfully in China. Its value took off. Musk, though still an unpredictable chief executive, seemed to run Tesla successfully alongside his rocketry firm SpaceX and other interests.

He collected 11 of 12 share tranches on offer via his Tesla compensation deal, making him billions as while other major shareholders also saw the value of their holdings leap up.

Denholm bought a $27.5 million penthouse in Cremorne Point on Sydney Harbour earlier this year. She cemented her place among the most successful Australian women in technology, and promoted diversity in a male-dominated industry. “Ms Denholm’s contribution to Tesla has been tremendous as chair of the board,” Musk told the Delaware court.

But the market downturn, where Tesla shares are down more than three times as much as the S&P 500 index, has prompted a reassessment of her by some commentators.

An opinion article in this vein published in the Australian Financial Review amid the Twitter meltdown in December argued Denholm “lacks the credibility or experience to manage a figure of Musk’s historic importance.”

It is a longstanding critique, with fears from the moment Denholm took the chairmanship that she was there just as an “adult in the room” without the power to rein in Musk.

Certainly, Denholm has showered Musk with praise even as she has asserted her independence. “The world would be much better off if we had more Elons and more of those types of people who can create bold ambitions and really achieve them,” she said in a profile piece.

As chair of the Tech Council of Australia, Robyn Denholm has rubbed shoulders with government ministers, such as Ed Husic.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

In Australia, Denholm sits at the centre of the local technology scene. She is chair of the Tech Council of Australia, the industry’s lobby group, which happens to share a PR representative with Denholm.

She is an operating partner with Blackbird Ventures, a start-up investment fund, where she mentors the founders of young companies. Neither organisation would make anyone available for interview or comment on Denholm. Morse Micro, a Wi-Fi chipmaker that Denholm has advised, did the same. But far from seeing her position as part of Australia’s reverse tall poppy syndrome, where those who have “made it” overseas are instantly feted at home, people who know Denholm praise her as understated but also underrated.

“There’s not many people in Australia with experience in high-growth environments across multiple decades and sectors, so there’s value in that,” said one start-up founder, who spoke anonymously to protect relationships. “She’s then very quick to get to where value is and opinionated about how best to capture that value as opposed to a lot of advisor types who are fence sitters.”

“She also is great in the details of governance, finance, people decisions.”

With Musk in her charge, she needs to be.

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