Activision CEO Set for $15M 'Golden Parachute' in Microsoft Deal (axios.com) 36
There are big potential payouts ahead for controversial Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, according to an extensive SEC filing about Microsoft's planned $69 billion acquisition of the company. From a report: Microsoft and Activision propose that Kotick could receive as much as $22 million in stock in July or later, if Activision's board sees improvement in company culture. Measured improvements would include the implementation of a zero-tolerance harassment plan and an increase in hiring women and non-binary people. Kotick took a pay cut in October in response to the company's scandals and said he was forgoing bonuses until the board saw improvement.
The filing also indicates that the board may extend Kotick's contract by 12 months beyond its current March 2023 expiration. Kotick has not been expected to remain at the company long after the merger, a source told Axios' Ina Fried earlier this year. Should Kotick be fired without cause by Microsoft, he'll get a $15 million "golden parachute," according to the filing's compensation proposal. The filing reveals that Microsoft gaming executive Phil Spencer began talks with Kotick about a potential acquisition on Nov. 19, three days after a Wall Street Journal expose that said Kotick knew of sexual misconduct at the company for years.
The filing also indicates that the board may extend Kotick's contract by 12 months beyond its current March 2023 expiration. Kotick has not been expected to remain at the company long after the merger, a source told Axios' Ina Fried earlier this year. Should Kotick be fired without cause by Microsoft, he'll get a $15 million "golden parachute," according to the filing's compensation proposal. The filing reveals that Microsoft gaming executive Phil Spencer began talks with Kotick about a potential acquisition on Nov. 19, three days after a Wall Street Journal expose that said Kotick knew of sexual misconduct at the company for years.
Re:Get woke and go broke... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Hilarious!
That doesn't add up. (Score:2)
If blind hiring naturally increases diversity, then why do we need to have "hire more women and non-binary people" stated as a goal at all? Shouldn't the goal just be "increase diligence in blind hiring practices, and let nature run its course?"
The only reason we would need to focus specifically on increasing the numbers of specific demographics in the workforce is if practices like blind hiring don't work.
Personally, I think that blind hiring is awesome. For real, no sarcasm. I am a fan of blind hiring
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Well, if you have 100 candidates and it just so happens 90 of them are white/Asian men and the remaining 10 are women, non-binary, black, etc.
This means you basically have to just hire out of those 10 and hope they aren't terrible, because, diversity.
Blind hiring is still going to land you with mostly men that are white or Asian just because of who is applying for the jobs.
CxO = capitalist royalty (Score:3)
The amount of money these people make has nothing to do with work or productivity, it's all about social class. That's why they get several human lifetime incomes per year for doing fairly unremarkable management work and several more for fucking up so badly that they lose their jobs. Everyone from board level to company owners are capitalism's royalty and everyone else is a bunch of peasants, and the royalty of the middle ages could never have dreamed of the level of inequality and impunity that capitalism's royalty enjoys today.
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The problem with this is that capitalism's royalty has hoarded all the money for themselves, making it extremely difficult for the capitalist peasantry to open a business - they're working hand-to-mouth and can't afford much income interruption, to say nothing of purchasing the means of production. It's especially difficult if they don't want to hand most of the profits of their labor back to the capitalist royalty by bringing them on as investors (which would be largely incompatible with the democratic wor
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...the royalty of the middle ages could never have dreamed of the level of inequality and impunity that capitalism's royalty enjoys today.
You either are making a flat attempt at humor or have never opened a history book. The poorest Americans live like kings compared to the poor of the not-so-distant past, where starvation, childhood mortality of up to 50%, and overall life expectancies in the 30s were common. The human race in thousands of years of history has never overall been so prosperous as it is today.
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I've opened plenty of history books, maybe you should open up a dictionary and look up "inequality," because while it's true that poor Americans today live like nobility of the middle-ages and that overall prosperity is relatively high, that has nothing to do with inequality (or impunity).
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I think doc spock was referring more about keeping perspective
sure, capitalism has room for improvement, but overall the benefits have unequivacolly improved humankind -- by far -- than any other system in human history
more advancements in quality of life, health and medicine, tech/science, etc, have been made in the last 200-300 yrs than in the thousands of years before
so don't throw the baby out with the bathwater; point out weak points and let's work on them
I'm no fan of meritless fools with power but t
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sure, capitalism has room for improvement, but overall the benefits have unequivacolly improved humankind -- by far -- than any other system in human history
This statement is rather misleading because it sort of overstates and understates the number of alternatives our current system has been put up against, all at the same time. First because it lumps together all forms of capitalism into one, taking the others that have been tried over time out of contention either because our current system absorbed them or because they coexist with it, while excusing the worst excesses of what could be called modern "late stage" capitalism, and because it suggests that the
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thanks for replying
always tough to discuss complex things because not every angle can be covered and so many assumptions have to be in place so I'm certainly painting in broad strokes; so I'm not really getting into the refinements of all the different flavors of this or that, who what or where; we can always pick a few examples to persuade one way or the other but that's not my point exactly
since it's all interconnected, something like the industrial revolution has valid connections to capitalism and cap
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Also, today's poor may have some luxuries, but none of the power over others that nobility came with, so that comparison isn't that useful.
What's worth more; a TV and refrigerator or being able to send whoever you want off to a dungeon?
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If we all had TVs and refrigerators we wouldn't need the dungeon except for rare situations.
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There is literally nothing stopping you from doing this, except fear. It's super hard to start a company, it's super hard to keep it going, it's super hard to get people behind you and your vision. But it's not impossible, and unlike your analogy to royalty, in the past there is literally no way for a peasant to ever gain the upper strata of society. In today's capitalism markets, there is nothing stopping you other than that it's hard work.
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There is literally nothing stopping you from doing this, except fear.
...and the lack of money.
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I work with many entrepreneurs. I know two that self-funded a company. I've met and worked with at least 100 more, none of which came from money, but figured out how to put food on the table while taking no salary to get it going. Many couch-surfed, or lived on their middle-class parents generosity. One guy slept in his car for 4 months so he could take less salary to keep paying his employees. All str
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Yes, it's not impossible, just as most of us have never been struck by lightning but one man was struck over a dozen times in his life. But let's not pretend there is no excuse or good reason many can't go in that direction. For example, having a wife and kids or other dependents. For many, you might as well say "It's simple, just change the gravitational constant!".
Likewise, let's not pretend there does not exist an aristocracy that need not suffer at all in order to start a business. For that matter, they
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There is only two skills required to start a company. Every other skill you ha
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And yet the post I replied to was you talking about people missing meals and living in their car or couch surfing. Would you have managed to move your wife and kid into your car? Note you'd need to evade child services to do that, especially the part about missing meals.
You are the guy who won the lottery telling everyone all they have to do to succeed is just keep buying those tickets until their ship comes in. For every person who squeaks by, getting the sale just in time to keep the lights on, there are
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If it was, there would be more than the nominal competition there currently is. Capitalism has allowed the company I work for to purchase all its competition, and if any appears they have the market power to buy it or drive it out of business.
It wouldn't matter how hard I worked, I could not compete.
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It's a problem. An economy thrives best when there are many competitors in every business. But, the option to freely trade ownership of companies has a long-term effect of competitors absorbing each other until there is a single monopoly or cartel, successfully erecting barriers-to-entry that block new entrants.
The only way to preserve the "healthy competition" in a market, without disallowing free trade of the means of production, is to have the government constantly intervene and enforce anti-monopoly l
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Why not make something else? If you work at a car manufacturer and you install tires, is your only marketable skill the ability to install tires? Because I would argue that your skill is to align metal-fabbed parts to each other and fasten bolts, which when redefined that way now has marketable skill in say the oil and gas industry building pipelines, or plumbi
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Software being a great example if you think about Microsoft's history (for example).
Incredibly common... and not even than big (Score:2)
All CEOs and most VPs have such a package (if they know how to negotiate).
Steve Ballmer's parachute was stock based, but totaled $750M at the time he left Microsoft. $15 is cheap! LOL.
Honestly if that's all it costs to get rid of him (Score:2)
Pocket change and so what? (Score:2)
$15M impresses credulous plebs but it's pocket change for big business and his employer was delighted to agree to his compensation package or they'd not have.
It's that simple.
Don't forget his bonus last year... (Score:2)
Was $150million. I'm sure he's not complaining, but he was compensated up the nose for his flagrant abuse of staff and the lucky bump of having the incentive scheme vest the year of "COVID stimulus" where most/all game devs saw record profits.
He *owns* the company (Score:2)
People forget that Kotick is a top owner of the company. Even at "measly" %0.5 of the overall stocks, he would still receive hundred of millions without a golden parachute:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]
And let us be completely honest here. Microsoft cannot demand a change in leadership while the deal can linger for a year or more. They need some sort of stability.
In any case, all these misconduct allegation have made a lot of money for Kotick, and will make even more soon. Sorry, but that is the reality