There may be slightly less yachts and exotic cars in Andrew Wilson’s future. A new company filing highlighted by Axios has revealed that the EA CEO was “only” paid $19.9 million in the 12 months ending March 31, 2022, a significant decrease from his previous annual earnings of $39.2 million. Wilson’s decrease in pay follows complaints from stockholders who had argued that EA executives were receiving bonuses that were too large and frequent, something that prompted the company behind the Battlefield and Madden franchises to dial back on some of its earlier proposals for higher raises and other benefits. The EA CEO was given a $30 million stock grant in 2021, but that was reduced to $18 million for the past year.
It's executive pay reporting season. Here's how EA's CEO did last yearhttps://t.co/lFm3NS9fi2
— Stephen Totilo (@stephentotilo) June 16, 2022
The numbers are certainly lower but still within the stratosphere of executives of multibillion-dollar corporations.
As is typical at megacorps, top EA execs, including Wilson, receive income through a mix of salary, cash bonuses and stock grants, some of which take years to vest and are tied to company performance metrics.
In deciding performance-based payouts, the board determined that EA had achieved its targets of releasing planned games within the fiscal year, kept its gaming services online over 99% of the time and increased workplace diversity, among other criteria.
Source: Axios
Discussion (9 replies)
Join Discussion →Under $20 million? Gosh, how will he survive? Straight to the poor house for this guy. His life must be unbearable now. Let us all take a moment of silence in honor of this man and his great suffering. Wow, it must be really terrible.
LAWLZ
And I thought I was on top of the world when I was making about 16 grand a year in the 2000s.
He must work 200 times more as any old game developer in the company.
CEO getting 20 times more than the company average, that would be where I'd cap it. This way if management wants to raise their own salaries, they first need to raise a significant portion of actual staff salaries.
Of course the revolving doors will never allow such law to be put in place.
I remember taking a job that paid $7/hr after working for minimum wage (just a little over $3/hr back then) and thinking to myself, "what am I going to do with all this money?". Yes, I was poor (but not broke), but I was also ignorantly happy ... I didn't know what I didn't have and I didn't care. Those days are long gone now.
The smart CEOs get paid $1.
And all the stock options they can eat that only get hit with capital gains if you cash them out, and benefits that don’t get taxes
I'm not familiar with US law, but I'm pretty sure here in the EU you got to pay income tax when you cash out.
You are right, there is a form of income tax on stock options, but it's treated much differently than regular income and has a lot of loopholes that you can work around; provided you can afford an accountant to work them for you. But there are a lot of benefits that won't get taxed at all, like use of the corporate jet, meals, chauffeur service, health & life insurance, liberal use of the corporate expense account, "work meetings" at resorts with the family, etc.
The real game in the US is that you don't cash out. You borrow against the value, and since it's collateralized, you get ridiculously low interest rates.
For the past several years, the interest rate you paid on the loan was less than what you would make in returns for even a modest stock investment. That may flip a bit with the interest rates starting to rise lately, but the interest rate has to go up pretty high before it's more expensive than cashing out and paying the subsequent taxes on it.
Wow I feel bad for him.... he can come sleep on my couch. Except I'll need him to buy me a couch, and a mansion to put it in first.
My first permanent job was about $4/hour which was twice the minimum wage back then. I never had an issue spending it. Honestly, I don't even know where most of my money went as I have nothing to show for it, and never had any savings back then.
Yup I remember the 3.75 an hour Burger King high school days. :( But all the free old, stale burgers you could steal.