Activision Blizzard last week responded to a request submitted by SOC investment group, which urged shareholders to vote against the re-election of several company directors. In a document released today, Activision expressed its wish to clarify the "obvious misrepresentation" of SOC and continue to list several changes of the company, which have recently been implemented under the leadership of the current board of directors.
This includes the introduction of new policies, including a zero tolerance policy for harassment, a drug and alcohol policy for the activities of international companies, and a zero tolerance policy for drinking in the workplace.
It also noted that Activision had "made progress in ensuring the diversity of candidate lists for all vacant positions", and highlighted several newly recruited positions, including the senior executive of equal employment opportunity, fairness and compliance, and the chief diversity, fairness and inclusion officer
Citing the allegations in the Wall Street Journal's report last year, Activision added that, as stated in the lawsuit filed by the California Department of fair employment and housing last July, SOC "wrongly claimed that Activision Blizzard had a 'brotherhood' culture."
While referring to these reports, Activision claimed that it had never ignored the charges against it, but added that some statements in previous articles of the Wall Street Journal were "half true and half false", which would be misleading without proper background and depict inaccurate Activision Blizzard. "
"The board of directors and its external consultants have determined that there is no evidence that senior executives or the board of directors of Activision Blizzard have deliberately ignored or tried to downplay the occurrence and reporting of sexual harassment," the letter continued.
Activision continued that SOC "not only failed to solve the significant workplace progress supervised by the board of directors to improve the corporate culture, but also incorrectly described the governance practices of the board of directors and distorted the results of previous shareholder votes to conform to its false statements."
In a document submitted last week, SOC urged shareholders to vote against the re-election of several directors of Activision Blizzard at the company's annual meeting next month, including CEO Bobby Kotick. It accused the company of failing to properly address the company's "Brotherhood" culture and said that it "has the responsibility to hold these current directors accountable".