David Zaslav isn’t just making himself rich – Business News
Yes, David Zaslav made a boatload of money promoting Warner Bros. Discovery to Paramount Skydance – a payout price more than $800 million that shareholders begrudged him earlier this month within the type of a non-binding vote towards it.
What’s much less talked about is how he additionally unfold the wealth. Specifically, the media mogul often known as “Zas” introduced an possession tradition to the proprietor of Warner Bros., HBO and CNN when he took over in 2022, with almost half his 35,000 staff receiving stock awards as half of their compensation.
That stock has appreciated from a low of round $7 a share to the ultimate sale price of $31 a share – equal to just about $80 billion excluding debt. That means staff, about 16,000 of them, are sitting on one of the best stock trades within the media business lately.
Media mogul David Zaslav introduced an possession tradition to the proprietor of Warner Bros., HBO and CNN when he took over in 2022. He made a lot money promoting to Paramount Skydance. Jack Forbes / NY Post Design
“People are putting their kids through private school because they hold the stock,” one affiliate informed me in an interview. “They’re buying homes. This is how the system is supposed to work.”
WBD gross sales to Paramount Skydance gained’t close till regulatory evaluations are full; press reps for the company say they don’t have granular particulars on the average quantity of stock given out and the average appreciation. But my sources there supplied me with some attention-grabbing anecdotal proof on the upside of Zas’s possession tradition–significantly after his bidding conflict for the company ended.
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One particular person is advert gross sales was awarded $100,000 in stock, which appreciated to round $600,000; a company occasions planner who acquired $220,000 in stock, is now sitting on a nest egg price more than $1 million; ditto for somebody in WBD’s sports-production group.
As I beforehand reported, probably the most neglected half of the annual letter from BlackRock CEO Larry Fink might have been his call to increase what’s often known as the “ownership culture” to Middle America.
People apprehensive about shedding their jobs to outdoors forces like AI can benefit from technological advances by investing in it, based on Fink. That’s simpler than ever given the proliferation of varied exchange-traded funds, mutual funds and even fractional shares of stock.
Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison was victorious within the bidding conflict for WBD. AFP through Getty Images
Zas’s possession tradition plan got here from his a few years at NBCU, when it was owned by General Electric and run by the legendary CEO Jack Welch. Zas counts Welch, who died in 2020, as one of his company mentors (together with cable pioneer John Malone).
Welch was one of the primary CEOs to advertise stock possession broadly inside GE’s workforce, aligning worker and shareholder pursuits. It paid off when GE grew to become one of the market’s hottest shares.
Zas grew to become CEO of WBD after operating Discovery Inc., the place Malone was a main shareholder and helped engineer the deal to mix his company with Warner Media, which was flailing beneath the possession of AT&T.
He had his work cut out for him: Zas needed to cull mountains of debt; restore a middling streaming service and a studio whereas slicing prices.
Jack Welch was one of the primary CEOs to advertise stock possession broadly inside GE’s workforce New York Post
He additionally needed to instill an possession tradition within the workforce, significantly at Warner Bros., a company that had been altering arms seemingly each few years, even when the market didn’t cooperate.
For years, shares of WBD hovered between $6 and $8; Wall Street short sellers – skilled merchants who make money betting a stock will fall – pounced. Zas, nevertheless, believed in his strategy a lot that he took most of his pay in stock choices, which means if shares improved he would take part within the upside.
So did many staff. By 2025, as they acquired shares within the type of compensation, Zas’s imaginative and prescient for the company started to take form. He was slashing debt to manageable ranges; Warner Bros. started churning out hits on the box workplace; he fixed his streaming service, lastly naming it HBO Max. It grew to become the third largest behind Netflix and Amazon Prime.
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WBD additionally grew to become takeover bait. First David Ellison, backed by the deep pockets of his father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, got here calling, bidding $19 money and stock for WBD. In response, Zas, as first reported on these pages, staged a bidding conflict. He ultimately pitted streaming giant Netflix towards the Ellisons, pushing the ultimate gross sales price to $31 a share – all in money.
Zas is getting a lot of ink over his huge payday, and a degree of grief from the same old class-warfare suspects for making a lot money from the sale of the company. What that narrative leaves out is that he did take a probability on himself by taking most of his compensation in choices.
“When he got here, WBD gave stock out as compensation only at the senior levels,” one affiliate provides. “He wanted to create an ownership culture so he spread stock out through the company.”
Jack Welch can be proud.
