Nice Work If You Can Get It: EA's Riccitiello, Moore Earn Big Bucks in Bad Year
Nice Work If You Can Get It: EA's Riccitiello, Moore Earn Big Bucks in Bad Year
May 29, 2009
Yes, Electronic Arts may have laid off 10% of its workforce and posted a billion dollar loss in recent months, but rank has its privileges, after all.
And ranking execs at EA are clearly among the privileged, based on a preliminary proxy statement filed by EA this week which lists compensation for its top officials. CEO John Riccitiello's fiscal 2009 package, which included salary, stock awards, option awards, benefits and a performance-based cash bonus, is valued at $6,365,823.
EA Sports President Peter Moore won't be brown bagging his lunch, either. EA lists Moore compensation package at $4,284,366. Here's the breakdown for Riccitiello (right) and Moore (left), EA's two most high-profile execs:
Here are Riccitiello's numbers:
- Salary - $793,749
- Bonus -
- Stock Awards - $1,055,461
- Option Awards - $4,115,305
- Non Equity Incentive Plan Compensation - $400,000
- All Other Compensation - $1,308
- TOTAL - $6,365,823
And here are Moore's (cost of game launch tattoos not included):
- Salary - $564,624
- Bonus -
- Stock Awards - $1,443,741
- Option Awards - $1,589,290
- Non Equity Incentive Plan Compensation - $200,000
- All Other Compensation - $486,711
- TOTAL - $4,284,366
The Associated Press notes that Riccitiello's incentive bonus dropped from $625,000 in fiscal 2008 to the $400,000 figure listed above. In contrast to EA's filing, the AP estimates Riccitiello's total compensation at $11.1 million, using a $9.9 million valuation on stock options.
Not bad for a crappy year.
UPDATE: gamesindustry.biz reports that an unnamed EA spokesman has taken umbrage at the Associated Press claim that Riccitiello's options are worth $11.1 million:
Their calculation is inaccurate. It includes value of performance-based shares that will vest over several years - and only if high performance hurdles are met.
As reported, it appears as though those shares are compensation for this year, which they are not. Accurately, they are an opportunity to earn shares over the coming years if company objectives are met.
The spirit of those shares is to link executive compensation to the achievement of long term financial objectives. That programme, which is in place for all of EA's top executives, is designed to align interests of shareholders and management.
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Comments
Like most companies posting huge losses (some requiring bail-outs), the LAST thing they think of doing is cutting the outrageous executive compensation. But Union workers on the production lines? Their contracts MUST be renegotiated.
Keep saying if I ever end up rich I'm going to buy the companies that make my favorite products, but have recently been taken over by douchebag MBAs, and gut their exec ranks, hire younger, cheaper execs. Perhaps some with a clue.
So...if the two of them both gave up their yearly loot for about a hundred years, EA wouldn't have had a billion dollar deficit!! Woo!
That's just the two most visable. There is still the CFO, the General Counsel, CIO, the head of HR, the head of marketing, their deputies, etc etc etc
Even if they have 50 guys total in the million plus range, their billion dollar loss would still be worth 20 years of salaries. http://www.xkcd.com/558/
Err, I meant if they had enough guys in the upper ranks to account for 50 million dollars in salary and compensation. Bah, you guys can do the math.
EA? Out of Buisness? Someone's going loopy.
Cmon now, really? Yeah, it seems excessive to most people here, but think about it. The cost of these guys salaries is miniscule in comparison to the amount of cash that flows through EA. Cutting their salaries would have an insignificant impact on EA's financials.
I guess it would be good PR, to show fiscal thriftyness in these times, but it wouldn't go much beyond that.
His compensation package could pay the salary of 60 EA employees. It really is ridiculous the levels that CEO and other company leader'd compensation packages have risen too.
The clock is ticking CEO's.... I give you all about another three years of this kind of BS before the world revolts against this kind of greed.
You mean 3 years before obama and his gang take over this company like they're doing to the auto industry and "socialize" it by giving everyone a piece of it? Unions are what destroy the industry.
Go out and try to get to a CEO position level before you come here and talk nonesense.
Fortunately we had statistics a while ago on the level of unionization at EA, which is practically zero. (In most places except at one developer studio it is zero.) Blaming unions for "destroying the industry" when the industry doesn't even have unions shows a lot about the people that blame everything on unions...