If the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and the lyricists Gus Kahn and Raymond B. Egan could come back from the grave, they might seek out and thank Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav for validating their line about how "the rich get rich and the poor get poorer."
That's because Zaslav just scurried to the top of the list of America's most overpaid chief executives published annually by the consumer advocacy group As You Sow.
In 2021, when the total shareholder return of Zaslav's company (then known as Discovery) declined by 22%, Zaslav's compensation rocketed up to $246.6 million from $37.7 million the year before, a gain of 554%.
