Former Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav raked in a bumper sum of more than $600 million for masterminding the company’s $110 billion sale to Paramount — but he wasn’t alone.
Zaslav’s top deputies also did extremely well with the consolidation under new parent company Skydance, which closed this week, according to SEC filings. Streaming and gaming chief JB Perrette, CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels and super-retail boss Bruce Campbell each took home payouts of between $120 million and $150 million, while international chief Gerhard Zeiler also pocketed around $90 million.
Together, the quintet of top executives collected more than $1.1 billion in merger-related compensation. In the history of media and entertainment, only the IPO and subsequent privatization of Ari Emanuel’s Endeavor Group Holdings rivals the merger in terms of executive compensation tied to an M&A deal.
RELATED: Skydance Raises Salaries, Extends Top Executive Contracts; New bonuses for WBD Brass
There are caveats, of course. Perrette could choose to defer the merger payment given that he remains in Skydance management. Additionally, windfall gains are subject to taxes and withholding, and stock options vest on varying schedules. Several executives had already sold WBD stock, meaning this week was not a one-time earnings event for them.
While Zaslav is expected to become a billionaire from the deal, a company representative told Deadline that he has made efforts to share the upside opportunity within the company. Nearly half of its 35,500 total employees owned stock in the company when the merger closed this week, up from about 8,500 in 2022.
Given the significant appreciation in the once-moribund stock price over the past year, approximately 500 employees now have more than $1 million each in equity, as the New York Post note.
RELATED: New Skydance Sets Top Executive Structure as Paramount-WBD Merger Closes
Many others beyond the Big Five also saw significant paydays. General Counsel Priya Aiyar, a former American Airlines executive and deputy advisor to the U.S. Departments of Treasury and Energy, joined WBD in February 2025, but still managed to receive more than $57 million from the merger, for example. Debra Lee, the former BET CEO who served on WBD’s board, raised $1.3 million, while former board chairman Samuel Di Piazza received $3.1 million. Ken Lowe, who sold Scripps Networks Interactive to Zaslav’s Discovery Communications for $14.6 billion in 2018 and then served on WBD’s board, took home $18.1 million from the Skydance deal.
Zeiler was a holdover from the Time Warner and WarnerMedia eras, while Perrette, Wiedenfels and Campbell each played key roles at Discovery, which Zaslav took public as CEO in 2008. They helped elevate the company to new heights of industry prominence with the improbable $43 billion merger with WarnerMedia in 2022 and then this year’s combination with Paramount. Along the way, they received annual compensation packages that often ranked among the richest in corporate America.
RELATED: WBD’s JB Perrette Makes the Jump to Skydance: Here’s Why Zaslav’s Lieutenant Ended Up in Ellison’s Executive Suite
The Reverse Morris Trust transaction that combined Discovery with WarnerMedia was engineered by John Malone, the longtime Discovery investor and wise media billionaire who has long been a key advisor to Zaslav. At other companies controlled by Malone, including Liberty Media, top executives have also enjoyed lavish compensation packages over the years.
WBD shares spent most of the post-Discovery merger period underwater, but Zaslav and his team managed to attract interest from several bidders after declaring their intention to split into two companies. After rebuffing an initial offer from Paramount at $18 per share, they accepted Netflix’s offer for the studios and streaming portion of the company at $27.75 before finalizing with Paramount.
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