Viacom CEO Paid $20.3M In 2017

Bob Bakish

Bob Bakish, a longtime international exec at Viacom who moved up to CEO in December 2016, made $20.3M in salary and bonus money in fiscal 2017, the company disclosed today in a proxy filing with the SEC.

In a residue of the pre-Bakish era, when ousted CEO Philippe Dauman was among the highest-paid CEOs in America, the statement showed that former COO and interim CEO Tom Dooley took home $53.6M in severance pay.

According to Deadline-Hollywood, the other key element in the Viacom proxy was the revelation that Ken Lerer, chairman of BuzzFeed and an influential media and tech player, will not continue on the Viacom board. The other nine board members have been re-nominated by the company to continue.

Shareholders will have their annual meeting March 8 in New York, according to the filing.

Bakish has applied a more low-key management hand than those of his predecessors as Viacom enters a critical phase in its comeback effort. As it regroups, the company also has been mentioned in a spate of reports of M&A conversations as media players look to scale up to keep pace with growing peers like Disney. Shari Redstone, who leads controlling shareholder National Amusements, has explored anew coming back together with CBS, two years after the companies abandoned merger talks.