As You Sow, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting corporate sustainability, has published its list of the 100 most overpaid CEOs for the year 2019. Made it to this list are representatives of Activision and EA, two giants of the gaming world.
As You Sow’s calculation took these CEOs’ annual salary and shareholder returns as the variables. Kotick of Activision who earns over $28 million a year was ranked 45, while EA's Andrew Wilson sat at number 98 with his yearly earnings of more than $35 million. According to As You Sow, Kotick and Wilson were overpaid by $13 million and $19 million respectively.
The average CEO/Employee earning ratio is 142:1. These figures for Activision and EA were much higher, sitting at 301:1 and 371:1. In general, the report has a ratio of 300:1.
This list came around after both companies announced their latest financial situations. Despite having the best year ever, Activision still fired around 8% of its total number of employees, which means hundreds of its former workers are now in the market for new jobs. Things were not so good for EA with its third quarter failing to meet its target. The main reason might come down to the fact that some of its games, such as Battlefield 5, did not perform as well as expected. However, the company can get its hope up as Apex Legends boasted a huge success, reaching over 25 million players after just a week. Thus, EA might be in for a massive improvement.
For employees working in the gaming industry, more pressing issues are the working conditions and Activision’s shocking termination of employment, which were mentioned in an open letter by AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the United States, to companies in this field. More importantly, both of our overpaid CEOS Wilson and Kotick are in the letter.
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