Former Spotify, Conde Nast and CW executive Dawn Ostroff is expected to join the board to World Paramount in May.
Ostroff is set to join the board as an independent director at Paramount Global’s annual meeting on May 8. Outgoing board members Candace Beinecke and Ronald Nelson will not be standing for re-election at this meeting, bringing the number of directors to 11, including Ostroff.
Meanwhile, in the annual proxy statement filed Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Paramount disclosed that CEO Bob Bakish’s 2022 compensation had risen to $32 million last year from $20 million in 2022. 2021. Bakish’s haul last year was inflated by $16 million in stock. price. The cash bonus portion of his 2022 compensation was $12.9 million, down from $16.8 million in 2021. He also earned $3.1 million in regular salary.
“We are thrilled to welcome Dawn to Paramount’s Board of Directors at such an exciting time in our evolution,” said Shari Redstone, President of Paramount Global. “We believe his leadership, diverse content strategy expertise and long track record of driving transformation will prove invaluable as we seek to continue to build on the success of Paramount’s global multi-platform strategy.”
Ostroff’s appointment as an independent director follows Paramount having to pay $122 million to settle a shareholder lawsuit in connection with the 2019 merger of Viacom and CBS Corp. (the successor company was renamed Paramount Global in 2022). Paramount Global also faced criticism that its board did not have enough senior executives with deep media experience. Ostroff has an extensive TV and digital resume, and she knows Paramount after leading The CW and its predecessor network, UPN, for nearly 10 years before its mid-2011 exit.
Along with Ostroff, Paramount’s board of directors will include eight independent directors. However, control of the company is still firmly entrenched with Redstone, which controls about 80% of Paramount’s voting rights through preferred stock held by its family holding company, National Amusements. This ensures that Ostroff will be elected to the board at the annual meeting.
Beinecke had served on the board of Paramount and Viacom since 2018; Nelson joined Viacom’s board of directors in 2016 amid a massive company shake-up that led to Bakish’s appointment as CEO.
“We are deeply grateful to Candace and Ron for their years of dedicated service and partnership,” Redstone continued. “Their guidance and expertise have been instrumental in reaching key milestones and evolving the company to be competitive and a leader in today’s media landscape.”
After Bakish, the highest-paid corporate executive at Paramount Global is chief financial officer Naveen Chopra, whose compensation in 2022 reached $6.5 million. About half of that came from stock worth $3 million, in addition to $2.6 million in cash bonuses and $1.4 million in salary.