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A tie-up between CBS and Viacom would put together the pieces of a media empire. It might also garner one of the industry's best-compensated chief executive officers an even bigger paycheck.
Mergers can bring windfalls for executives through special awards tied to cost savings or pay raises for running a bigger business. That kind of incentive might be needed to motivate CBS's longtime CEO Leslie Moonves to take on more heavily leveraged Viacom, whose cable networks such as MTV and Comedy Central have been losing viewers to newer and nimbler competitors.
A larger media empire could be tempting for Moonves. Rejoining Viacom with CBS would double the company's revenue and give the CEO a film studio, Paramount Pictures—one asset he has lacked.
And according to Aalap Shah, managing director at executive compensation consultant Pearl Meyer, "Executives who end up running substantially larger companies after a merger typically see their pay grow over a number of years to motivate them to stick around."