David Zaslav, the chief government of Warner Bros. Discovery, acquired $49.7 million in compensation final yr, a 26 % improve from the earlier yr, in response to a proxy assertion filed on Friday with the Securities and Alternate Fee.
It is not uncommon for chief executives in media to obtain lavish pay packages. Mr. Zaslav’s compensation for 2023 is notable, nevertheless, as a result of Warner Bros. Discovery is not precisely a portrait of well being. Losses totaled $3 billion in 2023, which was really an enchancment from $7 billion in losses the yr earlier than. Income fell 4 %, largely due to the corporate’s atrophying cable tv enterprise, which incorporates CNN.
As well as, Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders despatched a transparent message about Mr. Zaslav’s pay on the firm’s most up-to-date annual assembly: It’s too excessive.
In a nonbinding “say on pay” vote, solely 50.8 % of shareholders authorized of the $39.3 million he was paid in 2022. Approval by lower than 70 % is taken into account “low assist” by ISS, a number one company governance agency.
For 2023, the Warner Bros. Discovery board adjusted compensation formulation for its high executives. The adjustment concerned sure bonuses — tying them extra to the technology of free money stream, which is useful in paying down debt, and fewer to the corporate’s inventory value. (Shares have these days traded at about $8, down from $24 two years in the past.)
By way of free money stream, Warner Bros. Discovery had a spectacular 2023. Free money stream totaled $6.2 billion, an 86 % improve from the yr earlier than, vastly greater than Wall Road had anticipated. That was partly a results of improved financials on the firm’s streaming division, which turned worthwhile.
The cash allowed Warner Bros. Discovery to trim its whole debt by 11 %, to $44.2 billion, in 2023.
Mr. Zaslav’s compensation for 2023 included a $3 million base wage and long-term inventory awards of $23 million, in response to the proxy. He additionally acquired $22 million in money, a cost assured by a 2021 employment contract and associated to his function in merging Discovery and WarnerMedia. (In 2021, Mr. Zaslav, then working Discovery, acquired compensation valued at $246.6 million.)
To match, Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief government, acquired a pay bundle value $31.6 million in 2023, a 31 % decline from 2021. (Within the interim, he retired and unretired.) Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-chief government, acquired $49.8 million, on a par with a yr earlier. Bob Bakish, chief government of the troubled Paramount International, was paid $31.3 million in 2023, down 2 %.
Pay packages like these — when leisure firms have been walloped by the shift to streaming from conventional tv — performed a main function within the union strikes that shut down Hollywood for six months final yr. “They plead poverty, that they’re dropping cash left and proper when giving a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to their C.E.O.s,” Fran Drescher, the president of the actors’ union, mentioned at July rally. “It’s disgusting.”
Many of the large media firms slashed prices in 2023, shedding hundreds of individuals and saying plans to make fewer films and tv reveals. However Mr. Zaslav and his lieutenants have been notably aggressive, even shelving almost completed content material like “Batgirl” and “Coyote vs. Acme.”
“We mentioned no sacred cows,” Mr. Zaslav mentioned at The New York Instances’s DealBook Summit in November.
