Bobby Kotick

Robert A. Kotick (born 1963) is an American businessman who served as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Activision Blizzard and previously Activision from 1991 to 2023. He became the CEO of Activision after purchasing a company stake the previous year. Kotick engineered a merger between Activision and Vivendi Games during the late 2000s, which led to the creation of Activision Blizzard in 2008 and him being named the company's inaugural CEO. He has also served on several boards, including The Coca-Cola Company from 2012 to 2022, and Yahoo! from 2003 to 2008.[1][2] Following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, Kotick retired from the company on December 29, 2023.

Kotick is a non-executive director for The Coca-Cola Company and a board member at the Center for Early Education and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He previously served as a Yahoo! board member from March 2003 to August 2008.[10][46][47][3]

In 2019, Kotick's total compensation at Activision Blizzard fell to $30.1 million,[48] down from his 2018 package of $31 million in salary, bonus, perks, stock and options. 85% of his 2018 compensation came from stock and options. He was the 21st most highly compensated CEO in the United States that year. He also earned 319 times more than the average Activision Blizzard employee's salary of $97,000 in that year, putting him in 75th place among U.S. CEOs.[49] He was working under a deal signed in November 2016 with Activision Blizzard under which he earned bonuses if Activision Blizzard meets certain financial targets related to mergers and acquisitions.[50] The contract locked him in until 2021.[51]

In February 2019, the non-profit organization As You Sow ranked Kotick 45th in a list of the 100 most over-paid chief executive officers of the United States.[52] A 180% increase in Activision Blizzard's share price since March 2016 triggered an incentive bonus in Kotick's 2016 contract. Kotick was expected to receive a bonus of $200 million, which was reduced to a bonus package of $155 million following criticism.[53][54]

A native of Long Island, New York, Kotick resides in California with his family.[67] Bobby married Nina Kotick and they have three daughters: Grace, Emily and Audrey.[68] He and his wife divorced in late 2012.[5] Kotick dated Sheryl Sandberg from 2016 to 2019.[69] His home in Beverly Hills is filled with Abstract Expressionist art.[5] Kotick has donated to University of Michigan sports.[70]

Kotick identifies as a libertarian and donated to the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2007 and 2008.[5] He endorsed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the run-up for the 2016 U.S. presidential election.[71]

>>21641195

Sheryl Sandberg

Sheryl Kara Sandberg (born August 28, 1969)[2] is an American technology executive, philanthropist, and writer. Sandberg served as chief operating officer (COO) of Meta Platforms, a position from which she stepped down in August 2022.[3] She is also the founder of LeanIn.Org.[4] In 2008, she was made COO at Facebook, becoming the company's second-highest-ranking official.[5] In June 2012, she was elected to Facebook's board of directors,[6] becoming the first woman to serve on its board. As head of the company's advertising business, Sandberg was credited for making the company profitable.[5] Prior to joining Facebook as its COO, Sandberg was vice president of global online sales and operations at Google and was involved in its philanthropic arm Google.org. Before that, Sandberg served as research assistant to Lawrence Summers at the World Bank, and subsequently as his chief of staff when he was Bill Clinton's United States Secretary of the Treasury.

After graduating from business school in the spring of 1995, Sandberg worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company for approximately one year (1995–1996). From 1996 to 2001 she again worked for Lawrence Summers, who was then serving as the United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Bill Clinton, as his chief of staff. Sandberg assisted in the Treasury's work on forgiving debt in the developing world during the Asian financial crisis.[20]

She later joined Google in 2001, where she was responsible for online sales of Google's advertising and publishing products as well as for sales operations of Google's consumer products and Google Book Search.[22][23] During her time at Google, she grew the ad and sales team from four people to 4,000.

In late 2007, Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and chief executive of Facebook, met Sandberg at a Christmas party held by Dan Rosensweig.[11] Zuckerberg had no formal search for a Chief Operating Officer (COO), but thought of Sandberg as "a perfect fit" for this role.[11] In March 2008, Facebook announced the hiring of Sandberg for the role of COO and her leaving Google.[25]

After joining the company, Sandberg quickly began trying to figure out how to make Facebook profitable. Before she joined, the company was "primarily interested in building a really cool site; profits, they assumed, would follow."[11] By late spring,[when?] Facebook's leadership had agreed to rely on advertising, "with the ads discreetly presented"; by 2010, Facebook became profitable.[11] According to Facebook, (as of 2012) she oversaw the firm's business operations including sales, marketing, business development, human resources, public policy, and communications.[26]

In 2012, she became the eighth member (and the first woman) of Facebook's board of directors.[27]

In April 2014, it was reported that Sandberg had sold over half of her shares in Facebook since the company went public. At the time of Facebook's IPO, she held approximately 41 million shares in the company; after several rounds of sales she is left with around 17.2 million shares, amounting to a stake of 0.5% in the company, worth about $1 billion.[28]

The New York Times published a report in 2018 detailing Sandberg's role in handling Facebook's public relations after revelations of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and its Cambridge Analytica data scandal.[29] According to The Wall Street Journal, during a meeting, Zuckerberg blamed Sandberg personally for the outcome of the scandal,[30] and that Sandberg "confided in friends that the exchange rattled her, and she wondered if she should be worried about her job."[30]

On November 29, 2018, The New York Times reported that Sandberg had personally asked Facebook's communications staff to conduct research into George Soros's finances days after Soros publicly criticized tech companies, including Facebook, at the World Economic Forum.[31] In a statement, Facebook said the research into Soros "was already underway when Sheryl [Sandberg] sent an email asking if Mr. Soros had shorted Facebook's stock."[31]

On June 1, 2022, Sandberg announced she would be leaving Meta as COO[32] in the fall of 2022 but would remain on the board of directors.[9] Stating a reason for stepping down, Sandberg stated "it is time for me to write the next chapter of my life."[5] In January 2024, she announced that she would be stepping down from the board in May and not running for re-election.[10]

In 2009, Sandberg was named to the board of The Walt Disney Company.[33] She also serves on the boards of Women for Women International, the Center for Global Development, and V-Day.[26] She was previously a board member of Starbucks,[34] Brookings Institution, and Ad Council.

>>21641211

(cont.)

In November 2016, Sandberg renamed her Lean In Foundation to the Sheryl Sandberg & Dave Goldberg Family Foundation, after herself and her late husband. This new foundation serves as an umbrella for LeanIn.Org and a new organization around her book Option B. Sandberg also transferred roughly $100,000,000 in Facebook stock to fund the foundation and other charitable endeavors.[67]

In March 2014, Sandberg and Lean In sponsored the Ban Bossy campaign, a television and social media campaign designed to discourage the word bossy from general use due to its perceived harmful effect on young girls. Several video spots with spokespersons including Beyoncé, Jennifer Garner, and Condoleezza Rice among others were produced along with a web site providing school training material, leadership tips, and an online pledge form to which visitors can promise not to use the word.[64][65][66]

Sandberg married Brian Kraff in 1993 and divorced a year later.[72] In 2004, she married Dave Goldberg, then an executive with Yahoo! and later CEO of SurveyMonkey.[2][50][73] The couple have a son and a daughter.[74] Sandberg and Goldberg frequently discussed being in a shared earning/shared parenting marriage.[75] Sandberg also raised the issue of single parenting conflicting strongly with professional and economic development in America.[76]

On May 1, 2015, Dave Goldberg died unexpectedly, and his death was originally reported as resulting from sustaining a head trauma falling from a treadmill while the couple was vacationing in Mexico.[77][78] However, an autopsy later suggested that the cause of death was an arrhythmia,[79] as Sandberg subsequently confirmed in an interview.[80]

Sandberg dated Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick from 2016 to 2019.[81] According to an April 21, 2022, report by The Wall Street Journal, Sandberg was part of a coordinated campaign to prevent the Daily Mail from publishing a story about a temporary restraining order towards Kotick by a former girlfriend in 2014.[82] At the time of The Journal's report, Kotick's company was facing lawsuits over allegations of widespread sexual misconduct, which Kotick himself was alleged to have participated in.[83][84][85] These campaigns occurred first in 2016 (when Sandberg and Kotick began dating), and again in 2019 (the year they broke up). The Journal stated that Facebook was reviewing whether Sandberg violated the company's rules.[82]

On February 3, 2020, she announced her engagement on Facebook to Kelton Global CEO Tom Bernthal.[86][87] They were married in August 2022.[1] Bernthal has three children and Sandberg has two, and they live together in Menlo Park, California.[88][89]

Sandberg supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.[90] She declined to endorse Elizabeth Warren, an outspoken critic of Facebook, multiple times throughout the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, though stated, "I imagine I will support a Democratic nominee" over incumbent Donald Trump.[91]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheryl_Sandberg

>>21641227

Everything You Need To Know About The Activision Blizzard Scandal

January 20, 2022

Microsoft blindsided the world by purchasing publisher and developer Activision Blizzard in the biggest acquisition deal in video game history. This surprise buyout resulted in a slew of questions, such as “Which franchises does Microsoft own now?” and “Is Call of Duty now an Xbox exclusive?” However, the most prominent question was the simplest: “Why?” Why did Microsoft purchase Activision Blizzard given the ongoing investigation into the company’s alleged history of employee abuse and harassment and the numerous lawsuits that the investigation has resulted in?

Activision Blizzard’s legacy as not just one of the most successful studios in video game history but the makers of some of the most beloved and influential games of all time has forever been compromised by that investigation and the many revelations it has resulted in. It’s a story that has already changed the gaming industry and will certainly continue to do so.

Where and when did this harassment controversy start? This article should help get you up to speed.

https://www.denofgeek.com/games/activision-blizzard-lawsuit-major-events-history-everything-explained/