The CtW Investment Group, which in June found that Activision CEO Bobby Kotick was paid too much (and called on shareholders to do something about it), has now filed a similar complaint against Electronic Arts. In a letter to shareholders, the group claimed that EA was paying millions of dollars in bonuses to executives, especially CFO Blake Jorgensen and CTO Kenneth Moss, while its stock price was depressed and employees were being laid off.

According to the letter, in June 2017, Jorgensen and Moss were given "special stock awards" in addition to their regular compensation: $10 million in special stock awards in addition to the standard $6.5 million annual stock award for Jorgensen; $7 million in stock As Investopedia explains, equity compensation is a type of non-cash payment, usually in the form of stock or stock options, that a company may use to retain senior management.

The issue now is that just two years later, in November 2019, Jorgensen received an additional $7.5 million and Moss an additional $5.5 million in addition to the $7.5 million annual grant CtW notes that these equity awards were granted before the performance period for the previous special awards ended It noted that this raises the suspicion that EA is using equity awards to make up for income lost elsewhere and "undermines the spirit of pay-for-performance."

"Electronic Arts has added top executives, including two special award winners each, to its management team in the past year while its employees faced massive layoffs. This is an excessive focus on short-term things that is not good for EA's long-term success," Dieter Weisenegger, executive director of CtW Investment Group, said in a statement.

"The notion that we need to incentivize executives with salaries above the normal course program is a complete fallacy; EA executives receive more than adequate retention and performance incentives through annual equity grant amounts." The company has already admitted that this equity grant amount is set higher than the median of its peers.

CtW Investment Group's focus on "irresponsible and unethical corporate behavior and excessive executive compensation" carries weight in its statements, working with a pension fund sponsored by Change to Win, a coalition of labor unions representing nearly 5 million members, participates in the Taft-Hartley Pension Plan, a type of collectively bargained multiemployer pension plan with more than $250 billion in assets.

"CtW Investment Group pays particular attention to major corporate transactions and control contests. CtW Investment Group believes that at these critical junctures, shareholders' active involvement with the company's directors and management can prevent questionable transactions or alter the terms of a transaction."

The group is urging shareholders to vote against the "Say on Pay" proposal at EA's annual meeting in August, just as it did for Activision shareholders in June. Activision's campaign was not successful, but it did attract attention: in a June press release, CtW announced that over 43% of Activision Blizzard shareholders voted against the company's "Say on Pay" policy.