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News video games 15 January 2019, 00:10

author: Jacob Blazewicz

Activision welcomes the new CFO with a cosy sum of $15 million

Activision paid the equivalent of $15 million to Dennis Durkin in exchange for signing an agreement to take up the position of Chief Financial Officer.

Activision welcomes the new CFO with a cosy sum of $15 million - picture #1
Activision recommends Blizzard to tighten the belt, but apparently does not intend to save too much on its own.

Activision has recently terminated the contract with financial director Spencer Neumann, most likely in connection with his talks with Netflix. His duties were taken over by Dennis Durkin, who, in a sense, had already achieved his first success. According to Bloomberg service, Durkin received the equivalent of 15 million dollars for signing the agreement, of which 3.75 million was in cash. The remaining 11.3 million shares constitute a block of Activision shares with limited transferability, i.e. which can be sold only after certain conditions have been met by the recipient. In addition, there is an annual director's fee of $900,000 and a potential bonus of $1.35 million for achieving all goals.

One could say that there is nothing to discuss when we say about salaries of high position representatives in a corporation. It is a shame that this is a negative contrast to recent information about Activision's approach to its related company Blizzard Entertainment. Blizzard was instructed by the partner to manage finances in a better way and start saving more funds with making more profit. This could have been the reason why Blizzard offered some employees an annual salary in return for leaving their work.

Activision welcomes the new CFO with a cosy sum of $15 million - picture #2
Year 2018 looks pale for the company in comparison to the few last years.

Last year was not too successful for Activision Blizzard, overlooking another success of the Call of Duty series. The release of Destiny 2 was certainly not a success and the Diablo: Immortal presentation in November effectively discouraged many of the fans of Blizzard Entertainment itself. As a result, the company's shares have been falling for a long time, including by as much as 10% in December alone. Separation from Bungie Software a few days ago is unlikely to improve the company's situation, as is the departure of important employees (including Mike Morhaime, one of Blizzard's fathers). In theory, this could justify the aforementioned measures to reduce costs, even if Blizzard's fans do not look at them with a favorable eye. However, the rich welcome of the new Chief Financial Officer clearly does not fit in with this picture, and certainly does not improve the company's image in the eyes of the players.

Jacob Blazewicz

Jacob Blazewicz

Graduated with a master's degree in Polish Studies from the University of Warsaw with a thesis dedicated to this very subject. Started his adventure with GRYOnline.pl in 2015, writing in the Newsroom and later also in the film and technology sections (also contributed to the Encyclopedia). Interested in video games (and not only video games) for years. He began with platform games and, to this day, remains a big fan of them (including Metroidvania). Also shows interest in card games (including paper), fighting games, soulslikes, and basically everything about games as such. Marvels at pixelated characters from games dating back to the time of the Game Boy (if not older).

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