Highlights
- Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav could pocket up to $700 m from the $110 bn sale to Paramount Skydance.
- Zaslav has already made $113 m after selling shares in Warner Bros Discovery this month.
- Paramount expects the deal to complete in the third quarter of this year pending antitrust approvals.
The size of the payout was worked out on 11 March and will get smaller the longer the deal takes to close. If the sale is delayed until 2027 the tax money would drop to zero.
Paramount says it hopes to finish the deal by the end of the third quarter of this year. The deal has already been approved by the US Department of Justice but some US state officials could still try to block it and approvals are also needed in the UK and Europe.
Deal background
Netflix agreed to buy Warner Bros for $82.7 bn in December 2025 but later pulled out leaving Paramount to win the bidding war.
The deal is being paid for with $47 bn in funding backed by the family of Paramount boss David Ellison whose father is Oracle founder Larry Ellison.
Paramount is paying nearly 150 per cent more than what Warner Bros shares were worth back in September before news of a possible sale first came out.
Zaslav's huge potential payout comes at a time when analysts expect Paramount to start cutting jobs across its combined film TV and news businesses once the deal is done.
Despite facing heavy criticism for how he ran Warner Bros since it was formed through the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery in 2022 the value of his bonuses shot up once the company became a takeover target.
On a brighter note Warner Bros Discovery won 11 Oscars at the 98th Academy Awards on Sunday tying the all time record for most wins in a single year from 30 nominations overall.
