Activision Blizzard's Bobby Kotick $200m Payout Under Fire

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Bobby-Kotick.jpgBobby Kotick is set to receive a $200m payout and it's not going down well with CtW Investment Group whose mission is to hold companies accountable for "irresponsible and unethical corporate behaviour and excessive executive pay".

Activision Blizzard is one of the companies that has done well during the pandemic and this has triggered Kotick's Shareholder Value Creative Incentive in which he would receive any bonuses that were missed in subsequent years regardless of whether targets were met. This could total $200m and goes back to 2017.

CtW released a statement to Gamespot:

"While the increase in Activision's stock price is somewhat commendable, as we stated last year and continue to assert, this achievement alone does not justify such a substantial pay outcome for the CEO. There are many factors that may contribute to a rise in this particular company's stock price that may not be directly attributable to Robert Kotick's leadership."

This news comes on the back of layoffs at Activision Blizzard's eSports division and numerous layoffs at the company in the past year or so. Still, at least those without work will get a $200 BattleNet gift card.

bobbyred.gifThere are many tech stocks that have done well during the pandemic and online entertainment companies have reaped the rewards from people being locked indoors and Activision Blizzard is no exception.
 
That is an obscene amount of money to be given out as a bonus.
 
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I've got no problem with highly paid execs getting a bonus when they deserve it, but you'd be hard pressed to argue Kotick deserves it.

I also don't like this idea of the bonuses being retroactive. If you sucked that year, you should lose that bonus, period. You shouldn't be able to underperform at your job for ten years and then get payed like you did extraordinarily well all those years just because this year the company did well.
 
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Oh I don't know. If for example someone say, found a cheap and effective cure for cancer or some other equally terrible disease in less than a year, I'd be inclined to say let him have 200 mil.

Sitting on your butt draining the soul out of your company's franchises, announcing huge layoffs while reporting record profits, working harder on justifying your next big raise to the shareholders than doing something to earn it.... I'm gonna go with "No, I don't thinks so."
 
200 million, for someone probably in their mid 30s, you'd have to spend 4 million a year to use it up before death. It's just excessive, even for curing cancer. No one needs it, no one deserves that wealth. There is going to be stratified living no matter what, but I dislike that degree of imbalance.
 
When 3 families own more wealth than the bottom 50%, there is something wrong with the system.
 
200 million, for someone probably in their mid 30s, you'd have to spend 4 million a year to use it up before death.
And? Seems excessive to you because you don't have anywhere near that much. (Neither do I, just FYI.) But if they earned that wealth then you have no right to judge. Even if they didn't, unless they did something against the law, you still have no right to take it from them or dictate how they spend it. And in this particular case, the fault rests squarely on the people who agreed to the terms of this rather one sided contract.

Don't get me wrong. Bobby is a greedy scumbag and I'm appalled that how much they've been paying him to basically do jack squat. But the thing is that a lot of people like to whine about the "rich" because they are rich. Not because of their actions or character. They judge people by how much "wealth" they have, and for the most part don't even realize where that wealth actually is or where it came from, let alone who it is that signs their paychecks every week. I can safely guarantee you that the vast majority of that wealth is not in gold bricks sitting in a vault somewhere. Well, maybe in Bobby's case, but for just about all other wealthy people, even the tippy top of the 1%, it's been invested into other assets.
 
I'm sorry, but I'm not going to get involved in a discussion like this in a random part of this website. I apologize for helping make it happen.
 
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