- CEO David Zaslav will collect a $51.9 million salary at Warner Bros. Discovery. That comes despite a shareholder vote rejecting the pay package. An advisory firm had suggested shareholders say no citing “inadequate responsiveness and an unmitigated pay-for-performance misalignment.”
Shareholders of Warner Bros. Discovery voted down the compensation packages of David Zaslav and other top executives this week – but that’s not going to stop the company’s CEO from walking away with $51.9 million.
The “Say on Pay” vote was widely rejected, with 1,063,214,128 votes against it and just 724,453,004 in favor, a roughly 60/40 vote against the measure. (Shareholders, last year, approved the pay package by a 53% majority.)
The vote, however, is purely symbolic and nonbinding. The pay package works out to a 4% raise for Zaslav—an extra $2.2 million over his 2023 pay.
The Warner Bros. Discovery board, in a statement following the vote, said it “appreciates the views of all its shareholders and takes the results of the annual advisory vote on executive compensation seriously. The Compensation Committee of the Board looks forward to continuing its regular practice of engaging in constructive dialogue with our shareholders.”
Zaslav has been CEO of WBD since 2022. His pay rate is higher than that of several competitors, including Disney’s Bob Iger ($41.4 million), Comcast’s Brian Roberts ($33.9 million) and SiriusXM’s Jennifer Witz ($32.1 million).
While the shareholder vote was mostly ceremonial at WBD, other companies have started to pay attention to those totals. Netflix adjusted its executive compensation after shareholders rejected the pay package in 2023.
Shareholder advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services had recommended shareholders reject Zaslav’s pay package (and the others) “in light of inadequate responsiveness and an unmitigated pay-for-performance misalignment.”