Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders sent a clear message to David Zaslav last month: Greed isn’t good.
On April 23, they approved a plan to sell the company to Paramount for $110.9 billion, while overwhelmingly rejecting the windfall Zaslav is set to receive when the deal closes — as much as $886 million, according to Warners, though his actual payout will likely be less than that. In the nonbinding vote, owners holding 82% of shares opposed Zaslav’s golden parachute, which gives the Warner Bros. Discovery chief $552 million in stock, cash and benefits, as well as up to $335.4 million in reimbursement to take care of the tax bill on his lavish payday (an amount the company says will decline to zero by the end of 2026). The move may have been largely symbolic, but analysts believe that it signals growing distaste for the outsize rewards chief executives in the media and technology space receive for their work.
“It makes a difference,” says Rosanna Landis Weaver, a consultant at the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. “When a vote gets this high, boards of directors reasonably fear their reputations and start to take their responsibility to be impartial watchdogs more seriously.”
But Zaslav, who has one foot out the door, didn’t seem to get the message. A week later, Warner Bros. Discovery revealed that his pay package for 2025 had tripled to a staggering $165 million, making him one of the highest-paid CEOs in the world. In contrast, Tim Cook, the chief of Apple, which has a market cap of nearly $4 trillion compared with Warner Bros. Discovery’s $67.8 billion, had to settle for a compensation package worth $74.3 million.
Zaslav wasn’t the only chief executive enjoying a big raise. Overall, payouts to the heads of America’s biggest corporations accelerated in 2025, mostly in the form of stock and options awards. For 318 companies in the S&P 500 last year, the median CEO compensation package was…