Media Mondays, The View from Kyiv, Depp vs Heard

Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon guide to what’s new at Puck.

Today, William D. Cohan channels the mood on Wall Street as David Zaslav grabs the reins of the finally consummated Warner Bros. Discovery. Are its legacy shareholders a wet blanket for the stock?

Plus, below the fold: Julia Ioffe talks to one of Volodymyr Zelensky’s top aides, Serhiy Leshchenko, after a harrowing tour of Bucha and Irpin. Matthew Belloni weighs the evidence in the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial. And it’s Media Monday on the latest episode of The Powers That Be, as Jon Kelly joins Peter Hamby to discuss the D.C. media fascination du jour: Is the White House Correspondents Association dinner actually back?

The Zaz Stock Strategy & Buffett's New Tide

As ever on Wall Street, the smart get greedy when retail gets fearful. Plus: A history of Goldman scandals and the sports deal of the decade.

It’s something of a mystery to me, on the eve of Warner Bros. Discovery’s first day of trading as a newly combined company, that its parent stock has performed so poorly. I don’t make predictions about individual stocks of course—Dry Powder is not investment advice—but it seems as if the market has underappreciated the value that will be unlocked by housing all of the WarnerMedia and Discovery assets together under the direction of a single visionary executive, David Zaslav, especially during a moment when said market favors consolidation. The combination will create a streaming giant to potentially rival Netflix and Disney. Nevertheless, Discovery’s stock is down nearly 42 percent in the last year, reflecting the multiple contractions that have squeezed the streaming market, in general, but also investors’ negative view of WBD, in particular. And the price also reflects an unusual wrinkle in these sorts of deals.

Part of the problem for Zaz and his shareholders is the way the deal was structured to get it done. First of all there is a large “overhang” on the WBD stock, meaning that, at the moment anyway, some 71 percent of it is owned by former AT&T shareholders, who received the stock in Warner Bros. Discovery as part of the consideration for the deal. Given their experience owning TimeWarner for the past four or so years, and after seeing how owning it depressed the AT&T stock, chances are they are looking to dump their new shares. That means there are likely more sellers of the stock than buyers, applying downward pressure...

FOUR STORIES WE'RE TALKING ABOUT