The Notebook, where the City’s movers and shakers have their say. Today it’s investment analyist Susannah Streeter with the pen

Radio phone-ins, social media feeds and TV news programmes have all been taken over by talk of Elon Musk’s trillion-dollar deal. I was woken super early by one producer and the phone barely stopped ringing, such was the demand to fill column inches and airtime, with debate about the extremes of capitalism. Make no mistake, this is a performance-related pay package on steroids. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund called it out early, voting against the proposal given its super-excessive nature. But Tesla’s army of retail investors has been swayed by the big tech bro’s wishful thinking, desperate for his dreams of turning Tesla into a robotics and AI global front runner to become reality.

In many ways, you can’t blame the board for taking a punt on Musk. It’s all an act of speculation. If he really can grow Tesla into an $8.5 trillion business, they think it’s well worth the reward. Of course this is all pie-in-the sky, especially given so many of his Tesla projects – from the Roadster and Cybertruck to self-drive tech have been beset with so much delay and disappointment.

Any way you look at it though, the optics are just so wrong, at a time when millions can’t even afford public transport. It’s little wonder calls for a super tax on billionaires have........

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