March 30, 2007
GP offers a few random thoughts about yesterday's upheaval at GTA publisher Take Two: Everyone loves a good show. Unfortunately, Thursday's shareholder meeting was devoid of drama. Truth be told, the half-hour audiocast was pretty dull.
Despite making noises for months about attending the meeting, anti-game attorney Jack Thompson, who bills himself as Take Two's "most abiding and successful opponent," was an apparent no-show. At least, he wasn't heard on the audio.
More abiding - at least she was abiding enough to actually show up - was a representative of a religious order who made an unsuccessful motion apparently directed at GTA's game content. As reported in the company's summary of the meeting:
A shareholder proposal requesting that the Board of Directors' Compensation Committee include social responsibility, as well as corporate governance and financial criteria, in setting executive compensation was defeated.
NY Post columnist Roddy Boyd doesn't see the firing of CEO Paul Eibeler as a panacea for Take Two's woes, writing:
Take-Two's multi-year regulatory woes - running the gamut from accounting fraud to options backdating - are no closer to being resolved.
We got a minor laugh from the graphic (seen at left) included with Boyd's report in today's edition of the Post.
Coincidentally - or, perhaps not - the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV was released by Take Two subsidiary Rockstar a few hours after the meeting.
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