Two ways to read a $600 million goodbye

Optimist: Warner Bros Discovery's sale to Paramount was a $110 billion combination, and the executive who steered it earned accordingly — David Zaslav took home more than $600 million, with his top deputies also doing extremely well, according to SEC filings reported by Deadline. A payoff that size at least tracks a deal that size. Skeptic: the filings describe what executives received from a corporate combination, and the word for that in most industries isn't reward — it's exit.