Zynga has had several crucial executive exits in the past few months, and therefore, to protect itself from reaching a state of complete chaos, the firm recently entered into retention agreements with two key members of the senior management team.
To check high-profile exits
According to the Wall Street Journal, these executives are general counsel and vice-president Devang Shah and financing and accounting Chief David Lee. As per the agreement, both the executives “will receive six months of their base salary and target bonus, as well as an additional six months’ vesting of equity awards, if they are terminated without cause or choose to leave for “good reason,” says the WSJ.
The arrangement has been made following the recent exit of several high-profile executives from the firm. Some of the major executives that have resigned from their roles at Zynga recently include Chief Executive Officer, Don Mattrick and the Chief Operating Officer Clive Downie. While Mattrick left the company earlier this month, Downie’s resignation was only reported last week.
Zynga reveals executives’ pay for 2014
Mattrick, who was appointed as CEO in July 2013, will be replaced by Mark Pincus. The Zynga founder had already served the company as the CEO before the appointment of Mattrick. No replacement for Downie, who is now serving Unity Technologies as its Chief Marketing Officer, has been announced to date.
Separately, Zynga reported that it paid Mattrick an annual compensation of $8.2 million in 2014. This is substantially less than his 2013 compensation, when he earned $57.8 million. At that time, he owned stock awards worth $38 million and options worth $13 million. The compensation for COO Clive Downie also came down from $3.3 million in 2012 to $3.1 million in 2014. The compensation of general counsel and VP Devang Shah was reduced to half from $2 million to $1 million in the same period. Former CEO Mark Pincus was paid $33,308.00 in 2014. CFO David Lee received $4.3 million in 2014, while former CFO Mark Vranesh got $527,561, down from $3.9 million in 2013.
As of around 11 am EDT today, Zynga shares were unchanged, while year to date, the stock is down over 10%.
