Yes, David Zaslav is reaping a massive windfall from the Skydance deal but hes not alone

David Zaslav is making a lot of money from Paramount Skydance’s merger with Warner Bros Discovery – and so are plenty of other people who have been working for him, On The Money has learned.Zaslav’s massive payout as CEO of Warner Bros.Discovery was roundly attacked in the Hollywood ecosystem.

WBD got off to a slow start under his watch, yet he was paid millions.What was left out, however, is that most came via stock options when shares were trading at $7 and could be exercised at $10. Now that the deal is complete at $31 a share ($81 billion in equity valuation), Zas will walk away with around $1 billion all-in, I am told.

But – and this is an important but – he made sure that the wealth effect of the deal more than trickled down through WBD, and not just among senior executives as is usually the case in such transactions.To start, about a dozen people who work for him are leaving with at least $40 million each (and some multiples of that).Credit the fact that through his four years of running the company he pushed for an ownership culture.

Nearly two-thirds of the company’s 30,000 employees took some of their comp in shares when it was trading close to a penny stock.From what I understand, 500 employees now are sitting on over $1 million each from the deal.About 1,000 employees got appreciated stock worth $500,000 apiece.Yes, you will read from the leftist Hollywood community and its media cohorts about Zas achieving billionaire status as if it’s a scarlet letter.

You will read less about the assistants who are sitting on sizable nest eggs because that would prove one vital component of the capitalist system — the so-called mergers and acquisitions business — actually can work for the little guys, too.What is also overlooked in capitalism is that there are no guarantees for success, and you can say WBD was among the least guaranteed success stories in recent merger history.Zas took over officially in 2022 after running Discovery Inc., — k...