WBD head David Zaslav cashes out $114m after Paramount deal

David Zaslav, the outgoing CEO of Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) who shook hands on a $110bn deal to merge with Paramount last week after Netflix walked away, has cashed out $114m in WBD shares according to an SEC filing.

The mogul, who is expected to walk away from the merger with well over $500m from further equity sales, filed to sell off over four million shares in WBD on Tuesday when a limited trading window opened following the recent earnings report.

Top WBD executives like CFO Gunnar Weidenfels, streaming head JB Perrette, and chief revenue and strategy officer Bruce Campbell also filed to sell shares.

By persuading Paramount CEO David Ellison, financier Gerry Cardinale of RedBird Capital, and Ellison’s father and multibillionaire Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison to raise their all-cash bid for WBD to $31 per share, Zaslav dragged up the value far higher than it had previously been.

Stock had traded around the $10 mark for much of the time since the 2022 WarnerMedia-Discovery merger created WBD. Under Zaslav’s tenure, the combined value of the two companies comprising WBD fell by over 60% at its lowest point.

Many staffers are expected to lose their jobs as the horizontal acquisition creates a multitude of duplicative roles. Management at WBD and Paramount, both of which went through recent mergers most recently when Ellison’s Skydance merged with Paramount last year, have already laid off thousands.

Ellison and his team said there are $6bn in “synergies” to come and the worry in Hollywood is that, with a long-term debt load that could reach $79bn, there will be significant redundancies ahead.

The merger is expected to close in September. It needs the approval of WBD shareholders at a spring meeting on a date to be determined, and must also satisfy the US Department of Justice and states attorneys general, as well as European regulators.

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