Activision Blizzard shareholders have voted to approve boss Bobby Kotick’s $155m pay packet after a controversial delay.
GamesIndustry.biz reports the say-on-pay vote, which had been delayed to this week in what was seen by some as an effort by Activision Blizzard to avoid an embarrassing slapdown, won approval from 54 percent of shareholders – down from the 56.8 percent approval seen last year, which itself was down from the 58 percent approval of 2019.
The decision comes following significant pressure from CtW, an investment company that “holds directors accountable for irresponsible and unethical corporate behaviour and excessive executive pay”.
“Activision Blizzard employees face job insecurity following layoffs of 800 employees in 2019, and typically earn less than one third of one percent of the CEO’s earnings, with some employees, such as junior developers, making less than $40,000 a year while living in high-cost areas such as southern California,” CtW said in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission ahead of the original date of the vote on 11th June.
Activision Blizzard adjourned its annual shareholder meeting until Monday to address what it called “misleading” information about Kotick’s pay.
The say-on-pay vote was advisory, which means that even if Activision Blizzard had lost Kotick would still have collected his $155m – although doing so without shareholder approval would have been a bad look.
“With only 54 percent of votes cast in favour, the proposal nearly failed to receive majority support – it appears Activision did just enough arm-twisting for the measure to pass,” Michael Varner, director of executive pay research at CtW, told the Financial Times.