Activision Blizzard shareholders urged to vote against boss Bobby Kotick's bonuses
Average employee pay less than one third of 1% of his earnings.
Bobby Kotick, the boss of Activision Blizzard, is paid too much. That's the advice the company's own shareholders are being given ahead of a proposal to award the CEO another year of big bonuses.
If these bonuses are granted, Kotick will benefit from "multiple, overlapping opportunities" to earn "outsize equity awards", a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, reported by GamesIndustry.biz, claims.
This year's bonuses would give Kotick lower and less tangible performance targets with no reduction in compensation, two advisory services said.
Shareholders - a "substantial" number of which are union-sponsored pension funds - are being encouraged to vote against awarding these bonuses at the company's upcoming AGM next week.
Kotick has earned almost $100m at Activision since 2016. A typical Activision Blizzard salary is less than one third of one per cent of Kotick's pay.
In response, Activision told Gamespot that Kotick had overseen the company for 20 years, during which time its market cap had grown from $10m to $53bn, and that the majority of his bonuses were still performance driven.
But Activision continues to face criticism it is not investing that money back into keeping employee positions - other than its CEO - secure.
Last year Activision Blizzard announced it was laying off 800 people despite earning record financial results.