Take-Two paid chairman 2001 bonus - filing
LOS ANGELES, May 10 (Reuters) - Video game publisher Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. <TTWO.O> paid its chairman a bonus equal to 137 percent of his salary in fiscal 2001, amid a string of accounting problems in the year that prompted a federal probe, the company said in a filing on Friday.
In a proxy statement filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Take-Two said Ryan Brant received a salary of $575,000 and a bonus of $790,000.
No other executive on the compensation list presented in the proxy earned more than $360,000 in salary or $230,000 in bonuses.
Brant's five-year employment agreement, signed in August 2000, provides for a salary of $600,000 "and a bonus based on financial performance," the company said.
In December, Take-Two said it would have to restate some past results because of errors in the way it recognized revenues and treated product returns.
A delay in reporting those restatements led to a three-week halt in the stock earlier this year, before the company announced in mid-February the restatement of all of fiscal 2000 and the first three quarters of fiscal 2001.
Subsequently, the company said it would have to restate the last three quarters of fiscal 2001 to correct math errors made in the process of preparing those results.
The first restatement of the 2001 results increased revenue by $19 million and decreased the company's net loss by 1 cent. The second restatement did not have a net effect on results.
The company has been under formal investigation by the SEC and has had three chief financial officers in the last six months. The first of those, James "Chip" David, who was replaced in mid-December, was paid a $233,000 salary in fiscal 2001 and a bonus of $230,915, including the cash value of about $142,300 worth of shares of stock, according to the filing.
The company's fiscal year ended Oct. 31. In November it released "Grand Theft Auto 3," which became a major hit that topped game sales charts for 18 weeks and lead the company to raise its guidance for the current fiscal year. The strength of the game has driven the stock up 47 percent this year.
A spokeswoman for Take-Two was not immediately available for comment.
05/10/02 20:25 ET |
