Tesla names Oracle’s Larry Ellison to board

Tesla on Friday named Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, a shareholder and self-described close friend of Chief Executive Elon Musk, to its board to provide the independent oversight demanded by U.S. regulators after Musk tweeted about taking the electric carmaker private

The SEC fined Musk over misleading tweets that he had funding to take Tesla private.

Investors greeted the news by sending Tesla shares up more than 4% in the morning Friday trading.

Elon Musk remains as chief executive although he agreed with the SEC in October he would step down as chairman.

Larry Ellison is the co-founder and chairman of enterprise cloud software firm Oracle - currently the third largest software maker in the world after Microsoft and Google owner Alphabet.

He already owns three million shares of Tesla stock and is a close friend of Musk.

Actor Robert Downey Jr modelled the character of Tony Stark on Musk for the film Iron Man in 2008, and in 2010, Musk and Ellison famously made cameo appearances in Iron Man 2 as fellow tech billionaires.

Kathleen Wilson-Thompson is the global head of human resources at international pharmacy chain Walgreens Boots Alliance and was previously an executive at Kellogg.

The new appointments follow November's move by Tesla to appoint Australian telecoms executive Robyn Denholm as its new chairman.

In February, Tesla reported a record quarterly loss, partly caused by the carmaker's revamp of its manufacturing process to boost output of the Model 3.

The revamp was needed after a surge of orders in 2017 saw it struggling to meet manufacturing targets and deliver cars to customers.

This prompted worries about Tesla's finances and fanned concerns that customers would get impatient and cancel their bookings.

In June, Tesla cut 9% of its workforce as part of a restructuring intended to reduce costs and boost profitability.

In October the carmaker reported a quarterly profit for just the third time in its 15-year history.

In a striking and emotional interview to the New York Times in August, Musk said he had not been on drugs when he posted the tweets about taking Tesla private.

He did, however, say that he was exhausted after working 120 hour weeks and that the past year had been the "most difficult and painful" of his career.