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Debt Becomes Him

David Zaslav leveraged his way to media moguldom, then diligently paid down $21 billion of debt in three years, and is now making an unusual debt tender offer as part of the process of spinning out WBD’s linear TV assets. Is the offer really too good to refuse, or is it a coercive maneuver that leaves bondholders with little choice?

david zaslav graydon carter
Unwittingly or not, WBD may have created a whole new strategy for using a tender offer to capture the trading discount in bonds on the BBB cliff. Photo: Victor Boyko/Getty Images for Air Mail/Warner Brothers Discovery
William D. Cohan
June 18, 2025

These days, everyone and their dog seems to have an opinion on the soon-to-be-concluding Warner Bros. Discovery experiment. Should the deal have been consummated in the first place? Was its $55 billion in debt the original sin? Will the recently announced split get everyone to the promised land? In the meantime, however, there is some clarity on the initial phase of the separation plan—the highly unusual tender offer for a big chunk of the company’s still-outstanding $37 billion of debt: It’s proving to be an unqualified success.