Infogrames Founder Bonnell Received $4.7m Payout On Departure

Author: by Staff

According to Atari's yearly report recently filed with the SEC, former Infogrames founder and CEO Bruno Bonnell was given 3.0 million Euros ($4.7 million) when he departed the company in April of 2007. Shortly following Bonnell's departure, Atari's U.S. CEO David Pierce also left the company following what its board of directors chair called a "difficult period in the Company's history," which also saw parent company remove all but three Atari board members. In May of 2008, Atari and Infogrames agreed to a merger valued at around $11 million that saw Atari become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Infogrames. In its filing, Atari says that "neither our Board of Directors nor any member of our management was consulted about the agreement between [Infogrames] and Mr. Bonnell and our management was not provided with a copy of the agreement until more than two months after it was signed." The filing also notes that "during fiscal 2008, we stopped developing games, even through independent developers," echoing comments in November that the company had officially exited development to focus instead on marketing and publishing Infogrames products.