Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav can have his compensation “considerably” lowered after shepherding the corporate’s cut up, however he may also reap a considerable reward for his efforts.
In an SEC submitting Monday, the corporate stated it had revised the pay packages of Zaslav and CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels, who’s poised to develop into CEO of the TV networks entity that can end result from the cut up. Zaslav is about to run the studios and streamers unit, with HBO and Warner Bros., after the uncoupling. The cut up, introduced final week, is slated to develop into official in mid-2026.
Zaslav’s new settlement will “considerably cut back his goal annual compensation, together with decreasing his annual money compensation alternative and reorienting the full pay combine towards long-term incentives,” the submitting stated. The change will “foster a stronger alignment with stockholders and incentivize sustained, long-term worth creation.”
The compensation committee of the WBD board initiated the brand new employment agreements. In adjusting Zaslav’s pay, the committee thought of “a variety of inputs,” the submitting famous, “together with stockholder suggestions obtained over the previous few years, peer group practices and benchmarks, strategic priorities of WBD and the worth creation alternatives” inherent within the cut up.
Whereas the writing has been on the wall for a number of months about WBD splitting into two corporations, the swiftness of the announcement of the deliberate transaction has surprised Wall Road and business observers. Zaslav, who has reaped tons of of thousands and thousands in compensation over the course of his media profession, typically rating close to the highest of all U.S. company execs, lately obtained a rebuke from WBD shareholders. On the firm’s annual assembly, they voted towards his pay bundle, although below firm guidelines the vote was non-binding.
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