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Zaz’s $6 Billion Debt Dowry & A Hedge Fund’s Happy Ending

As Warner Bros. Discovery prepares to split in two, Wall Street is salivating over the financial alchemy underpinning the company’s plans to pay down, and divvy up, its outstanding debts—with something like $20 billion or so staying with the cable TV group, and the remaining $6 billion following Zaz on his new Studios & Streaming journey.

david zaslav
Since the beginning, both Zaz and C.F.O. Gunnar Wiedenfels have been richly rewarded by the board of directors to pay down WBD’s initial $55 billion in debt, and pay it down they have. Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Images
William D. Cohan
July 9, 2025

After a few tumultuous years for Warner Bros. Discovery, which has lost more than half its value since the company was merged into being in April 2022, David Zaslav can take a bit of a victory lap. Until very recently, the WBD equity story has been a dud, primarily because WBD’s annual adjusted EBITDA has been stuck in the $9 billion zip code, well below the $11 billion–$12 billion that Zaz & Co. had once promised. But the company’s debt story has been downright impressive, culminating in last month’s debt tender offer, which was recently completed—and phenomenally successful.