Asmongold SHOCKED By How Much Activision Blizzard CEO Makes | Bellular News

welcome back to another a boy that's so great it's a pretty well-documented thing in the games industry me but I don't you know of a shadowy CEO raking in the cash where the lower-level employees are working you know impossible hours yes it's an undeniably attractive image right a clear villain to act as an emotional touch point for many people's frustrations well if there's any CEO that fits in people's minds I think it is Bobby Kotick he's such a meme at this stage and yeah he's raking in tens of millions of dollars and stock options on top of his meaty annual salary particularly glaring example I suppose especially given the 800 employees cutting all of that stuff let's see how much Bobby Kotick salary is oh there it is it's one of the top ones thirty million dollars damn dude that's a lot of [ __ ] money let me see what's his net worth 600 million [ __ ] dude no wonder he's always smiling and he's actually an example that you know company shareholders are increasingly unhappy about according to recent reports yes haha think that enough is enough and today we are going to explore that of course first though press those YouTube buttons it truly does help the channel and if you like the idea use content and physical loot and your mailbox to go with it then check out the patreon link down in the description with that said let's get into the video ok let's talk about Bobby's beans I'm the investor who was not particularly happy about the Bobby's famous 30 point 1 million in 2019 now her point 8 million of that is the base salary while the rest is made up of his bonus stock and stock options though he did actually make another 90 grand in other compensation now this overall damage believe it or not was actually down on the previous year in which he made thirty point eight million yes oh Bobby's down about seven hundred K will he be able to make by God makes no storm out now the reason for this discrepancy is the 2019 was a quote year of transition my [ __ ] [ __ ] tea blaze in which its executive officers weren't able to receive their target bonus Kotick though did manage to secure 82 percent of his regardless overall that's crazy how like the guy that decides who gets bonuses always gets a bonus it's actually crazy how that happens like what what an amazing thing I think that at a certain point as somebody who everybody knows streamers make a lot of money okay as somebody who makes a lot of money you don't need to make more than a million dollars a year you just you don't you don't need it it doesn't like it [ __ ] flatlines make you you don't need to make more than a million dollars a year he bonus rolled it no he's not bonus rolling it he's it's it's unnecessary like what I'm saying is it like let's say you're making 20 grand a year let's say you make you add another 20 grand on top of that now you're making 40 that's the difference between eating ramen and eating Wendy's add another 20 on top of that that's the difference between eating Wendy's and eating at five guys okay actually you know what let's wait until we get to like two hundred thousand a year talked about five guys but you know maybe eating Panda Express maybe eating you know like an actual restaurant so as time goes on like the difference the difference in your life that twenty thousand dollars makes whenever you're making twenty thousand dollars is going for twenty to forty thousand dollars is much bigger than if you're making a hundred thousand dollars and you go to 120 thousand dollars what difference is that really make in your life let me tell you basically [ __ ] none okay there are some people that like to spend all of their [ __ ] money and they will always spend all of their [ __ ] money but that doesn't mean that that's a good thing or it's something that you should expect people to do once you're making thirty million dollars thirty million dollars Bobby third Bobby thirty million dollars like that's a lot of money it's it's probably - I would say it's - it's too much money diminishing returns on wealth increase yeah it's - I would say it's too much money now obviously it's a this is a private company but if I was an investor in the company and I saw Bobby getting 30 mil I'd be like Bobby how about let's just make it 20 I can guarantee you it's not gonna - nobody's gonna tell the difference Bobby just make it 20 and like it wouldn't even matter it would not even [ __ ] matter though this means that Bobby Kotick is one of the highest-paid executives not only in gaming but actually across the in higher entertainment media industry how can you saved over 20 million a year for the past four years in stock options alone I'm told was base salary now to do some like napkin math they're 20 million dollars of Activision Blizzard's stock that's two hundred and eighty five thousand shares now they're late is dividend paid forty one cents per so that is about a hundred and seventeen K in dividends which Activision Blizzard payout yearly of course he'll have a massive amount of like stock right from his very long time here there mister yeah that Bobby will be gettin chunky dividend payments but of course the main gains there will still be based on the value of his portfolio increasing now of course because that's [ __ ] insane dude like I Jeff Bezos makes less than that well here's the thing right is it I I think that if you if you don't work in the company you're not invested in the company and you have no stake in a company who gives a [ __ ] how much money this guy makes it's not your problem but whenever you're a stockholder in the company and you see that the dumb [ __ ] at the top are taking a bunch of money and flying around on private jets while the stock is going down I would be [ __ ] pissed look I would be so mad like I'm gonna come on Bobby like give it a break well why don't you do some work for once well really I mean it's just it's crazy man yeah and laying off all those people why the [ __ ] they have to do that yo and trading your own stock is risky business insider trading regulations are strong for very good reasons yeah right a large stock portfolio dividends that he's gonna receive now of course you can't get super technical about the relationship between dividends and the stocks value but you know what let's not bother your TLDR here is that all Bobby is doing pretty darn well for himself yeah the recent story well the issue is that shareholders are taking is that his bonus eclipses the total pay for many CEOs across the industry the CTW Investment Group are imploring stakeholders to vote against a measure that increases Kotex rate further AG a are calling for a vote against the say on pay proposal which is scheduled for active his annual meeting on June 11th the CTW is complete with them quite simply write another one opportunities to earn extra from his core duties that active lives also don't lay out as performance targets clearly enough and of the group are worried about what they say are deep operational problems from the apparent job insecurity while Bobby is continually reward and of course they draw attention to Bobby gadding like 30 million compensation after they laid off 800 stuff now what is it it's like you have 800 people that you lay off let's say you pay every single person 60 grand let me see here let's open up the [ __ ] just give me sir alright so you've got 800 800 people times 60,000 ok that's 48 million all right you could pay for like almost half of that yeah ok I guess like yeah it probably wouldn't be that much I guess I did the math of a wrong here are ok you know what it's not as bad as I thought it was I think I forgot a zero but it's still a little bit ridiculous 37 and a half yeah absolutely essential right that I don't really think it's been covered in a lot of other places what you need to know about this rights you understand it is to understand the CTW investment group because they're not your average investor they are an ethical investor that's broadly speaking a sort of category of investor like an ethical investor an activist investor but they basically work with pension funds that are backed by unions that are part of a federation called change to win now their stated goal is to maximize long term shareholder returns via active ownership and then if you actually dig into it they've got a lot of stuff about critiques of Wall Street and just you know responsible management of companies now what does this mean well they're an active investor they're using that worker money in the form of those pension funds and similar things to get clout and to advocate for longer-term change that's in a more ethical direction and more corporately responsible one and I suppose the idea there is that the more corporate responsibility and you know reasonable things going on I guess anti 2008 things then the more long-term positive results that will be actualized so that's basically their shtick that's what they're saying and you know activist investing it's very interesting field you've got everything from examples ranging from this group of activist investor nuns who are going I think it's against guns and it's a cool something like that but anyway I give nuns who've decided so they're gonna invest in alcohol companies and what the hell Wow I'd all my money in two months buying stock yeah buying stock you can make a lot of money like that well I didn't understand because I see like some guys you know rich people make money by doing nothing like the best way that rich people make money is by not doing anything like it's actually crazy well how the [ __ ] does that even make sense yeah they just invest their money can you check the corruption vendor who gives a [ __ ] you know what we're actually going to I need these corporate structures and things to actually organize so that we can dive care for the change that we want another one yes for example is Norway sovereign wealth fund which is also you know from time to time are pretty activist II and he trained internal the sorts of things that'll be advocating for and you know like from you know just from boards and stuff like that so yeah that's basically where this is coming from so it's not really your like average investor who is purely there just to get you know that right just for the stock okay just to see it go up there's kind of like a different angle from these guys now while the layoffs were undeniably pure PR and an absolute nightmare for all the staff involved they were a part of his new strategic direction one that involved cutting a bunch of fat and sort of realigning the business and it is a bit weird because I don't think that it's fundamentally bad to fire people because sometimes having more people makes it more complicated a good way to look at it is like have you ever tried to cook something and there's five people in the kitchen and you can barely move around like sometimes it's better to just have one person in the kitchen cooking so yes I I don't think that firing people is always a bad idea but at the same time it makes you wonder I do know that like even for having too many [ __ ] they were really I mean yes just a lot of bad organization over many cockles and things like that but right the thing then is well that's kind of Bobby únicos fault for actually making it that way which really did suck and you know what a lot of those staff they could have just reorganized in a way that did not involve booting everybody out because in so many teams like and on the World of Warcraft team they booted a guy out and then what happened pretty soon after they reposted his same job but I think with lower pay and an associate role and with more responsibilities that's how you do it you fire the people see you have somebody working for a while right and then you fire them because they get more money every year for working there longer and then you hire somebody else then you you you pay them less money so yeah you keep it interesting exactly men yeah it's the thing is like you can blame it on like capitalism or whatever but in any system you're gonna have people being pieces of [ __ ] I think the problem is not capitalism the problem is people and it doesn't matter what system it's gonna be there's gonna be somebody shaving money off of somewhere somebody taking power away from somebody people are the problem okay obviously certain systems are better than others not saying that but I'm saying that fundamentally these kinds of things will always exist to some degree I'm not something they did very rapidly capitalism makes people want to be greedy you're right before capital isn't existed nobody was greedy the Heartstone seems as well so it really is a pretty horrible situation there now the timing of codex bonus you know could have been better obviously right yeah with the 800 people and you know it could have been more clear though that was maybe an apparent reward for good performance that came from decision right something like nine results rather than just sort of simply as it happened which was a particularly bad look now octopus obviously defended their pay strategy their statement says that Kotex ten EUR is the longest of any public tax CEO and that Activision Blizzard's market cap is increased from under ten million dollars to over fifty three billion dollars with his leadership it also states that the share prices have performed consistently well over the past five years Kotick it argues has delivered exceptional value for stockholders and I mean that's all fair espousing his value but it doesn't really address the concerns of ctw Investment Group right and really that's part of the point here right Activision Blizzard they are a bit more cold and efficient a lot of Embraer as well while CTW is more of an activist investor which is why you'll see them be the types of people who can be bringing up things like this at these meetings in any case it's unlikely I think that launching an attack on the CEOs bonus is going to affect any significant change unless the morale and sort of corporate responsibility issues that CTW Investment Group raised actually have an impact on Activision Blizzard's returns and I don't think yeah I don't think it's really a big deal either way I mean this company makes billions of dollars every year like if they're gonna pay Bobby an extra ten mil like it doesn't in the grand scheme of things that doesn't really matter and like that's that's basically what what Bobby is a big juicy gambling addicted leech like I don't know about that I think that honestly he's just it's like once you measure the amount of way his yeah it's a multi dollar company well it's a multi-billion dollar company when you're talking about how much money they make and it's a multi dollar company whenever you're talking about how much money they spend that's really what's going on I mean it's not even going to be something that is clear or unclear it's kind of ya know now how could that stuff happen well you know you've got things like unclear performance stars opportunity for Bobby to harvest op compensation well that could set a per standard it could be bad for employee morale maybe it's not the way you want your company to be ran again think of saya Watsa right and how he did things they cited yeah I mean I think that's true like the I think that happened yeah it was the 3ds he took a huge pay cut and I think it's a different culture over there in Japan I think that the way that they the way that they view business is different than Americans view business and I'd actually like to see I think that they have probably like a more like my understanding look my dad's told me and like he was an executive the company before like before I retired and he kind of explained to me and I don't really know how true this is or not but he said that a lot of the goals like a lot of American companies have is more or less short-term because the way that they're hired and they move around in jobs whereas in Japan for example they have like much more long-term longitudinal goals and I don't know how true that is again but whenever I see changes like this with what Nintendo is doing etc expertise is key and long-term predictions and goals don't work I think that both are matter but both matter you know like it's important to have it's important to have quarterly goals and also a five-year plan I I do worry about the shorter term your goals are and the shorter term people's employment is I think that that does trend with accountability so if you're just moving around in different companies and you don't have to sit there and actually deal with the problem that you've created by going for a short-term gain then I do think that does open up a lot of possibilities for people to use and abuse different companies to try to make a lot of money and then just go somewhere else I think that's a big problem 800 lost employees and that taking a large compensation package you know at that time right like that I think anyone would say is terrible leadership as I just mentioned yeah Herot - owatta right whenever Nintendo was going through hard times their leadership took way higher pay cuts and what Bobby you know will have will have taken here which was you know like what thirty point eight thirty point one million now for cgw they also may think that the change with the eight hundred staff and just generally how the business is ran prioritizes short-term cost-cutting and efficiency over the long term fundamentals of the business and that is a very interesting topic and there's a lot of things to consider personally I would say this if you're an investor I think would actually be sensible to be bullish on Activision over the next five years I do think they you know you get pretty good returns but I do worry about Activision in the longer term timescales because I think we're in a situation where overwatch is iffy right there eSport stuff seems like it's a bit pumped up and not really that organic so let me rephrase what Bell you were said the overwatch League is a complete waste of money what's real is 'red really got right I mean they've got World of Warcraft as a massive thing d4 is that really going to be a massive long-term revenue source I'm not particularly convinced right now so on the blizzard side it's very well focused and then for Activision I mean they are Call of Duty they do other things as well but Call of Duty really is their main thing so overwatch too and Diablo 4 I think will do well enough call of doody yeah sure of course though these are always gonna sell well division Blizzard are not as well diversified as many other publishers and while that strategy is working now I would worry about the longer-term risk that's involved here especially since they historically have been slow to adapt new trends and if you go to some of the recent content that we've made its what a hundred and twenty eight games over the next five years that take two so on no is it 90 something that's it's some number like that and then embrace or group is even more games at currently in development so I'd imagine that Activision's number is actually quite a bit smaller than theirs are so I think that there's worries here about Activision being a bit short-sighted not being particularly creative not really being industry leaders right pushing us forward so that's a long-term worry but right now if Bobby is further incentivized to enable the high stock prices and all stockholders benefit them I mean it's working right I mean despite all the bad PR Activision Blizzard right now are on the warpath they obviously have some issues of the operational issues that CTW raised I mean especially be like it's a blizzards content output as well yeah everything seems to be gearing up pretty well in the activision site call of Judy and a wave of remasters the new Call of Duty's really good like it is like the new Call of Duty warzone and like the modern warfare is actually a good game it's the first good Call of Duty I think they've made in a long time he needs to be working well for them I'm looking at the stock price there are a few percentage points away from there before Blizzcon 2018 hi and of course I think that really tanked them was losing destiny to so they're now at a stage yeah I would really say the strength of the call of Judy brand through its expansion into warzone and mobile has now actually raised their stock value and remember stocks what are they really right they're just an expectation of future returns so that now that stock price is like what it was when they had an entire new entire like separate game a pretty major one in their business with destiny too so that just really shows you that by going deep I think God's starting to make up forces that are able to call that back and actually do pretty well of course though as I said the question is will that last long into the future of course though with these results I think shareholders a lot of them are just going to be keeping quiet reaping the rewards I'm not really caring that much well you know some of the activist investors like ctw who are maybe going to be trying to affect change I would maybe I think that another big impact obviously was having coronavirus and since everybody's inside like almost all gaming companies like if you look at I don't know like EA games stock like I'm pretty sure this is probably up to right yeah I mean this is up I guess it's not really up that much I guess yeah a little bit more but many games and many companies my understanding is at least that the user ship and everything is up by quite a bit and check valve okay I'll check valve real quick valve stock okay this is not not what I was looking for all right I'll finish the video they that it could be that ctw would be seeing problems because they're looking for problems they'd see them a little bit earlier and maybe just a few years before those problems really it's a precursor for a problem absolutely shoes for the other investors yeah let's do calls those issues then yeah you could maybe see some more fundamental changes are going on at the higher levels of Activision Blizzard but for right now I really don't think so I think it's going to be increasing stock price Call of Duty World of Warcraft D for overwatch too and after that I mean hey who the hell knows yeah hard to say they haven't reinvested that much or as much as a bunch of other companies in their sort of diversification as a business so there you go that is the recent story of Bobby Kotick and the pushback against his compensation as well as just some analysis of Activision business yeah of course be sure to check out the videos we post it on the child care if you're interested in corporate BS that take mm okay okay wait and of course hit that sub button because we will have a video up tomorrow so if that said thanks for watching and I'll see you next time alright so maybe this is like a highroad Andy thing to say but I feel like nothing has integrity anymore like that there's no there's no sense of integrity anywhere in the world you know you have people that are just I mean I know like this is a meme but it's not a meme like you have these news organizations that are deliberately misrepresenting things and deliberately playing things up in order to upset people and get them into a frenzy and make them feel a certain way or do a certain thing it's you have these companies that are prioritizing short-term gains over long-term profit and growth you have people individually that are just completely self-serving and they don't care about you know doing a good job at their job or doing anything or like I had this happen you know as I said I worked at the government like a lot of people just didn't even care about doing a good job or doing the right thing and it's such a systemic problem I don't think people realize how important it is because you can have laws and you can have you know rules and everything like that and you can look at it as a metaphor of a wall and those things are the bricks and the bricks cover 90% of the wall 90% of the wall was bricks but in the most important way the last 10% is the mortar and the mortar is where the integrity comes in the mortar is where the ethics come in and the mortar is what holds the bricks together and if you don't have the mortar you don't have a wall and I think what's ended up happening is it so many people focus entirely or not mordor so many people focus on getting what's best for them and not worrying about how to make the best type of content how to do the right kind of thing it's even with movies like how many spider-man movies are we gonna get how many spider-man movies like really like I mean how many it's crazy yeah I don't know man I see it with everything yeah Tony what Obie what's this about spider-man yeah Tobey probably was the best spider-man yeah it's another reboot of the same boring [ __ ] [ __ ] and then you have people who grow up only watching superhero movies that have this extremely like [ __ ] like basic view of the world they don't understand anything and I don't know it's just it's so disappointing to me it really is I don't know am I am I wrong on this I feel like I feel like this is the way that I'm looking at right integrity or capitalism pick one I feel like it's not even something that has to do with capitalism as I mean I think capitalism is an empowering factor for it sure but what I think that it is more so is its I think people don't really have a strong of a connection with like the culture and the community of the of the society and because they don't have that strong of a connection they're less likely to do things that would you know maybe put themselves maybe take a little bit more work for them but you know make this society and the culture better I think that's really what it is is because they're not connected it's the same as like if you know that if you do something bad it's like I imagine here's an example right if you work at a store and like you have a friend that works at the store you're probably less likely to throw garbage on the floor at that store at least I would be and so I think that as like extrapolating that to like the whole culture and everything it just happened it's happened wholesale individualism posts to the extreme because of the kind of things I don't think it's individualism I think it's it's alienation and more so it's self alienation I I don't think individualism is a problem I think that it's it's more complicated than that they want to watch the culture burn I don't know like it's just it's crazy for me to see like all the different ways all the different ways that happens dumb mistakes found here you're right you're right everything that I'm saying is dumb uh listen this is just like my opinion right I mean like obviously other people have different opinions it's whatever right but this is my opinion [Music]

Channel: Asmongold TV

Views: 132,061

Rating: 4.8930674 out of 5

Keywords: asmongold, asmongold reacts, asmongold wow, asmongold twitch, asmongold youtube, world of warcraft, asmongold moments, asmongold tv, asmongold channel, asmongold bellular, bellular, bellular news, bellular wow, bellular blizzard, asmongold blizzard, asmongold shocked, blizzard ceo, blizzard bobby kotick, bobby kotick, blizzard ceo salary, how much makes, asmongold how much, blizzard asmongold, activision blizzard, activision, activision ceo, activision blizzard ceo

Id: jUjrA1PBtpY

Length: 28min 51sec (1731 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 06 2020