Activision's Kotick was paid $64.9 million last year
Kotick is now one of the highest paid CEOs in the US
Activision Blizzard chief executive officer Robert Kotick was paid $64.9 million last year, according to documentation obtained by Bloomberg. The increase in compensation is due to Kotick's new employment agreement signed on March 2012, which gives the CEO stock awards of valued at $55.9 million over the course of his five-year contract. Though Kotick has not received the entirety of that $55.9 million yet, the compensation is on the books in 2012.
Kotick's total compensation, not including the stock awards, came to $8.33 million last year, which included base pay of $2.01 million and a bonus of $2.5 million. Kotick's total compensation in 2011 was also the same $8.3 million.
The new contract is retroactive from July 1, 2011 until June 30, 2016. Kotick received $1.9 million in stock awards in 2010, no stock awards in 2011, and no stock options in the past three years.
The new employment agreement and compensation puts Kotick as the second-highest paid CEO in the United States for 2012. The number one spot was taken by Oracle Corp founder Larry Ellison, who made $96.2 million last year. The compensation could be seen as skewed; in the last fiscal year Oracle posted a net income of $9.98 billion on $37.1 billion in total revenue, while Activision Blizzard recorded $1.15 billion in net income on $4.86 billion in revenue.
GMI Ratings corporate-governance consultant Nell Minow has misgivings about Kotick's compensation. He told Bloomberg that Kotick's salary and incentives are too high, and there's no clarity about how pay was determined.
"We don't like any element of this pay package," said Minow. "In the past we have expressed concern about this company and its compensation practices. The lack of information provided by the compensation committee is a red flag. It's very difficult to discern how they determined this compensation package from the information that's been provided."
Good luck to him I say, hope to earn that much myself one day.
The opposite of EA.
Capitalism and the downfall of humanity: on schedule and rockin'!
Don't make the usual mistake of pointing to the "injustices" of the tiny group of people on the planet who earn above the norm. You could kill them all and give their estates to the poor and it wouldn't make a single drop of real difference to anyone else. If my maths is correct, he could forego his salaray and instead run Spain for about 5 seconds. Given Spain isn't special, how about europe for what, a tenth of a second?
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Paul Johnson on 28th April 2013 11:36pm
Since a programmer/artist earns 50k/year, this gentleman must produce the equivalent of 1280 programmers/artists. I guess he does a lot of overnights...
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Ruben Monteiro on 29th April 2013 1:13am
The suspicion is that that the stock awards may not require such heroic achievements, though, which is all too likely in today's corporate environment.
This guys salary does seem a bit ridiculous, but most of it sounds based on a small percentage of how well the company is doing. Which is how all business owners and top execs get paid. If it wasn't like that, they wouldn't do it. It's how I get paid too, though I wish the numbers were in a similar vein. If my firm gets the success of Activision, maybe it will be.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Paul Johnson on 29th April 2013 9:09am
It's true that people in the red bar are doing disproportionately well for themselves, but I have a question to take away. Does that say more about the red bar people or the non red bar people?
Oh and you're right, my numbers were off, it's more like he gets 2200 times a normal salary. My bad.
Jakub, I'm all in favor of compensation for higher skills, but these values are simply ridiculous and can only happen in a dysfunctional system were money, instead of being a measure of the value of product/service, has become a value in and of itself.
Wow, you got all that from a couple of posts on a forum? I'm impressed.
FYI, I'm earning way less than that 50K you mentioned, despite having gambled my house on making a success of my business and still working about 60 hours a week at a minimum. Currently typing this on Tuesday morning at 3.31am for example. And I'm still nowhere near that red band. Who am I pissed at about all this? Nobody.
Stop whining and being jealous of the rich kids and address your own problems. When those at the bottom start doing more of that, those band widths will start to shrink, of that I have no doubt.
Good luck to him. They've had some successful games in recent years and the share price is holding up, so he is obviously continuing to make good decisions and consequently keeping everyone in a job.
The man is practically a super hero! Obviously he's worth more than the combined salaries of a thousand other employees!
I really don't see how some find this so hard to get. Probably down to all these assumptions about "skiving", "trickery", "old boy networks", "schemes" and "silver spoons". I guess hard work, focus, good skills and a track record only mean something to those earning peanuts.
There's a good test for an employee to see if he's worth $64,000,000. He says "give it me or I leave" and observes the result.
Edited 2 times. Last edit by Paul Johnson on 1st May 2013 3:37pm
A CEO is just another employee with their own domain of expertise, I don't see how they are valued so disproportionately (in this case, exponentially) higher than almost everybody else in an organization. If they were valued maybe 2x, 3x, 5x as much as the average employee that would be one thing, but 1000x? Seems far more likely that "old boy networks" and "schemes" are to blame here than good ol' hard work and elbow grease.
Bloomberg reported Monday that the ratio of CEO-to-worker pay has increased 1,000% since 1950.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
Hint: Base a response on what I write, not what you read. I never said any such thing.
You know what, I'm done arguing. If you think their job is easy money and just a scheme away, why not get a plan and do it yourself. You can then give your massive salary back to the workforce on the QT. No, seriously. Start now, you'll be there in a couple of years - that must be long enough just to think up one easy scheme.
I am going to wrap up with this:
A good CEO is indeed worth 1000x the wages of one programmer. Because one right decision over a wrong one will generate massively far more wealth for both the company and the employees as that one programmer. Put those 1000 people on the wrong track and pretty soon nobody's earning anything at all.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Paul Johnson on 1st May 2013 11:01pm