Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav noticed his whole compensation tick as much as $51.9 million in 2024, from $49.7 million in 2023.
The corporate launched the figures in its annual proxy assertion.
Zaslav is by far the best-compensated of any of the corporate’s prime execs. For years, particularly when he led Discovery, he was among the many highest paid CEOs in company America.
J-B Perrette, head of streaming and video games, noticed his whole pay decline barely in 2024, to $19,7 million from $20.1 million. The opposite senior firm execs have been paid between $14.8 million and $17.8 million every.
The report coincided with the information that John Malone, a key architect of the 2022 merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery, could be leaving the corporate’s board of administrators. He’s shifting to a chair emeritus function.
WBD has been underneath strain from an activist investor, and has responded with a variety of board modifications in current months. After accruing a stake of about 1% in WBD, hedge fund Sessa Capital has been agitating for the corporate to restructure. The Wall Avenue Journal has reported that Sessa pushed for extra board members to be added in addition to for the corporate to indicate extra progress on addressing its linear TV holdings. WBD owns numerous legacy cable networks, together with CNN, TNT and Discovery, whose scores and advert income are in secular decline as a consequence of cord-cutting.
WBD in the beginning of 2025 restructured the corporate into distinct divisions, which it mentioned would unlock potential strategic alternatives, together with M&A. Comcast is within the strategy of spinning off most of its NBCUniversal cable networks right into a stand-alone firm.
Within the proxy, WBD mentioned its annual shareholder assembly can be held June 2. Among the many 4 proposals shareholders will vote on on the assembly is one requiring an advisory vote from shareholders on government compensation, aka “say on pay.”
