David Zaslav, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO (for a few more hours, anyway) has started his goodbyes, thanking employees in a memo posted Monday on the company’s internal portal.
“It’s been a great honor to be alongside all of you,” says Zaslav speaking to the camera from a director’s chair in the at Warner Bros. Studios’ Ranch facility in Burbank. “I hope you take pride in what you’ve built, what you’ve created, and the role you’ve played in shaping an extraordinary history.”
The executive will be riding int the sunset with a large gold parachute when the Paramount-WBD deal closes on Tuesday. He and the WBD board inked a deal to sell the company to David Ellison’s studio in February. That’s four and half years after Zaslav-run Discovery acquired what was then called Warner Media from AT&T.
He set about paring down the company’s massive debt – a remaining substantial amount of which will be absorbed by the new Skydance – and pushing to turn a streaming profit. The company had planned to split in half, separating studios and streaming from cable networks and later agreed to sell the former to Netflix. Ellison continued to bid for the combined company and was ultimately able to pry the two apart and seal the deal, valued at $110 billion.
It was a rich transaction for WBD stockholders, who will get a $31 a share payout. (WBD finished its last day as a publicly traded stock at $30.95.)
Other sweeteners included a ticking fee from Paramount that kicked in Oct. 1 and an equity financing backstop by Larry Ellison.
“I can’t wait to see what you do in the years ahead,” Zaslav says in the video. “I’m so grateful for all these years at Warner Bros. Discovery, for the wonderful experiences creating content, telling stories and getting to know so many of you.”
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