Charlie Munger has nothing but praise for embattled Activision Blizzard (ATVI) CEO Bobby Kotick. Speaking during The Daily Journal’s annual shareholders meeting, Munger, who serves as chairman of The Daily Journal as well as vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, applauded Kotick’s management capabilities.
“I like Bobby Kotick a lot,” Munger told Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Andy Serwer in an interview prior to the shareholder meeting. “I consider him one of the reasonable people in that field. And I don’t think he personally tolerated a lot of crazy misbehavior either.”
Berkshire Hathaway purchased roughly 14.7 million shares of Activision Blizzard in Q4. Microsoft announced it will purchase the video game publisher for $68.7 billion in January at a price of $95 per share.
Kotick is staring down a maelstrom of controversy at Activision after The Wall Street Journal reported that the CEO knew of ongoing sexual harassment issues at the firm.
The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed suit against Activision Blizzard in July claiming the company allowed a culture of sexual harassment to fester unchecked for years.
The suit portrays a company as one that fostered a “fratboy culture” with men groping female colleagues and women being denied promotions and raises. One woman died by suicide due to a relationship with a male supervisor, the complaint alleged.
According to the suit, one employee noted that “women on the Battle.net team were subjected to disparaging comments, the environment was akin to working in a frat house, and that women who were not ‘huge gamers’ or ‘core gamers’ and not into the party scene were excluded and treated as outsiders.”
The Securities and Exchange Commission is also looking into the gaming giant over allegations that executives didn’t inform investors of continued workplace harassment. And Activision Blizzard agreed to pay $18 million to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to settle that commission’s own investigation into the company.
Kotick is expected to step down from Activision Blizzard when the Microsoft acquisition is finalized in 2023.
Despite Berkshire’s investment in Activision Blizzard and Munger believing "gaming is here to stay," he criticized those who play video games for long periods of time.
“I don’t like a bunch of addicted young males spending 40 hours a week playing games on the TV,” he said. “It does not strike me as good. I don’t like anything which is so addictive that you give over everything else to do it.”
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