Elon Musk has started work toward his $1 trillion Tesla pay package. But 2 loopholes foreshadow how it could be a bust for shareholders

The package consists of 12 tiered grants of restricted stock. Unlocking each “performance milestone” requires reaching both a valuation and an operational goal. It’s the safety deposit model: You need two keys to open the box. The market cap triggers start at $2 trillion and ascend by increments of $500 billion to the summit of $8.5 trillion, a number that’s 70% bigger than the $5 trillion that Nvidia recently notched to reign as the world’s most valuable company. The second group of keys are the “operation ...