David Zaslav Gets $606 Million Payout From Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger

Key Points:

• David Zaslav, former president and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), is leaving the company following its acquisition by Paramount, receiving $606.1 million from shares and stock options as part of the merger closing on October 6.
• The $606.1 million payout includes $381.7 million in stock options, subject to taxes, though nearly 15 million stock options became worthless due to the acquisition price being lower than their exercise prices.
• Since the deal was announced in February, Zaslav has sold nearly $200 million worth of WBD stock, and other top WBD executives are also departing with multimillion-dollar payouts.
• Zaslav is credited with improving WBD’s financial health by cutting jobs, increasing employee equity participation, and reducing gross debt from $53 billion in mid-2022 to $33.1 billion by mid-2026, despite a prior EBITDA loss and heavy debt load.
• Under Zaslav’s leadership, WBD moved from a $2.1 billion EBITDA loss in 2022 to a $1.4 billion EBITDA profit in 2025, with continued strong subscriber revenue growth in 2026, as the company transitions to being part of the newly formed Skydance entity.