While David Zaslav has stolen most of the headlines for his personal financial gains from the Warner Bros. Discovery-Paramount merger, several other rich payouts are in the offing.
The same SEC filing that laid out Zaslav’s expected $886.8 million in merger-related compensation Monday also included some eye-popping figures for other principals. Most of the loot – almost $384 million – is going to three key members of the management team that has flanked Zaslav since assembling atop the org chart at Discovery Communications nearly a decade ago.
JB Perrette, head of streaming and gaming at WBD, will receive $142 million in various merger-related proceeds; Chief Revenue and Strategy Officer Bruce Campbell will get $121.5 million; and CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels $120 million.
Gerhard Zeiler, a Turner and WarnerMedia veteran who was anointed as head of international for WBD in 2022 after the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery, is in line to receive $82.6 million.
The filing said the estimated tallies are “based on multiple assumptions that may or may not actually occur or be accurate” and actual amounts may differ. Already, Zaslav and senior execs have sold hundreds of millions in WBD shares.
The gaudy executive compensation figures have set tongues wagging on Wall Street and Hollywood, with the former praising the management team for its feats of financial engineering and the latter despairing at the brief stewardship of Warner Bros. and HBO. The merger, critics fear, will result in significant layoffs and further erosion of traditional Hollywood. (Paramount execs have pushed back firmly against that narrative.)
Until the past few months, when Netflix and Paramount jockeyed for position in trying to acquire the Warner assets, WBD stock had been under water for more than three years. Only in December 2025 did it break above the original level of $24.43 where where it closed on the day the Warner-Discovery deal was consummated in April 2022. At one point last spring, it slipped below $8 a share.
Initial projections for EBITDA ahead of the Warner-Discovery deal proved overly optimistic, a fact that has been cited by skeptics of the Paramount deal. On Monday, shares closed at $27.51, down from its level when the Paramount deal was announced and below the $31-per-share price of Paramount’s pending offer.
Along with senior executives, financial advisers and others involved in pulling off the $110 billion merger, will be in the money. WBD has agreed to pay Allen & Co. an aggregate cash fee of $100 million, of which $20 million was payable in connection with the Netflix merger prior to its termination last month.
WBD has also agreed to pay J.P. Morgan $90 million, of which $15 million was payable in connection with the Netflix merger prior to its termination. Of the total $40 million is contingent upon the close of the merger, which WBD and Paramount expect to happen in the third quarter. (A “ticking fee” of 25 cents a share per day, which will kick in after September 30, could affect the final payouts.)
During the two-year period leading up to J.P. Morgan’s opinion, the financial institution had made about $204 million from WBD, along with $2 million from Paramount, $12 million from RedBird Capital and $13 million from Oracle. RedBird is an investor in Paramount and its managing partner, Gerry Cardinale, sits on Paramount’s board. Oracle was co-founded by Larry Ellison, a financial backer of the merger and father of Paramount CEO David Ellison.