Ari’s Comp & Warren Buffett’s Wink

Ari Emanuel
Photo by Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic
William D. Cohan
April 3, 2022

Leave it to Ari Emanuel, the founder and head of the newly-public Endeavor Group Holdings, to get the headlines for being the highest-paid executive in Hollywood last year, with a total package clocking in at $308 million, most of which is a long-term equity grant that only has value if Emanuel supercharges the Endeavor stock price. That’s probably exactly what he wanted. But Ari is hardly the only mediaco C.E.O. making bank. David Zaslav made nearly $247 million last year, a figure that is also tied heavily to stock performance. Bobby Kotick made more than $150 million (and will make plenty more once the Microsoft acquisition of Activision goes through). 2021 will likely be remembered on Wall Street as the peak of a financial bubble that will take years to unwind.