Electronic Arts

Annual Meeting: August 6

I typically try to write about pay packages prior to company’s annual meetings rather than after, but the extraordinary level of opposition at Electronic Arts merits special mention. At its shareholder meeting, 74.1% of shareholders cast votes against CEO Andrew Wilson’s disclosed compensation of $21.37 million.  Only 25.9% supported pay at the company, which has appeared on As You Sow’s list of 100 most overpaid CEOs in three of the last six years.

In June, CtW investment Group launched a campaign highlighting the compensation problems at the company, including a shareholder letter filed at the SEC. The letter laid out a series of concerns, with headings such as “payoffs for layoffs” and another that described the company “a serial grantor of special awards.” That second one echoes a concern raised by ISS – which recommended against the proposal noting according to Proxy Insight, “Investors may expect special awards to be relatively infrequent and may question executives receiving multiple special awards in a relatively short period of time,"

Shareholders also objected to the sharp increases – in some cases more than doubling -- for other of the named executive officers including Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen, Chief Studios Officer Laura Miele and CTO Kenneth Moss. These executives with total compensation of $19.5 million, $16.1 million and $14.2 million respectively, each have pay packages higher than many CEOs.

CtW Executive Director Dieter Waizenegger describes the vote as “a clarion call for the board to stop piling awards on top of awards for top executives and make sure that the company develops a pay philosophy that is focused on talent development and retention throughout all levels of the company."