As you’ve probably heard, Microsoft wants to buy Activision Blizzard for a whopping $68.7 billion. But why Activision CEO Bobby Kotick suddenly decided to relinquish control of the company, and where that leaves the ailing executive after the ink has dried, depends on who you ask.
For example, Kotick himself said it’s about making sure Activision has the resources to address future trends.
“We looked around for the next few years and realized that we needed thousands of people to be able to execute our production plans,” Kotick explained during an interview unsurprisingly submissive interview through gamesbeat. “We need them in disciplines like AI and machine learning, or in data analytics, or in purpose-built cloud and cybersecurity — and we just don’t have that. And that competition for that talent is expensive and really hard to come by.”
As for Kotick’s tenure, everyone involved has confirmed that he will remain CEO of Activision Blizzard for the foreseeable future. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella even went so far as to say he is “grateful” for Kotick’s “leadership and commitment to real culture change,” a very enigmatic compliment to a man as vile as Kotick has become over the course of, well, his entire career.
However, additional coverage casts doubt on the stated reasons for Microsoft’s acquisition and the prospect of Kotick possibly staying on.
After both The Wall Street Journal and BloombergKotick is expected to leave Activision once the Microsoft purchase is complete next fiscal year. Kotick’s public reputation is after the Sexual harassment lawsuit filed against Activision Blizzard by the State of California and News by Kotick’s own fault. It only makes sense that Activision’s new owners would want to separate the company from the man currently in charge.
Bloomberg‘s coverage further notes that it was the same controversies that prompted Microsoft to step in and try to gobble up Activision Blizzard in the first place. Someone familiar with the procedure told it Bloomberg which Kotick didn’t want to sell but surprisingly didn’t have enough leverage his cronies on the Activision board oppose a takeover.
Despite Kotick’s initial reservations and potential future ousting, Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard should mark another lucrative payday for one of the highest-paid CEOs in the United States.
A quick scan of different independent sources shows that Kotick holds between 3.9 million and 4.3 million shares of Activision Blizzard, a cash windfall of $408.5 million at the $95 per share offered by Microsoft. And that’s not even taken into account Hundreds of millions of potential benefits he was promised that he would simply leave the company.
Honestly, it couldn’t have happened to a more sincere guy.
.
