Business

Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel’s Pay Hits $300M in 2021 – The Hollywood Reporter

March 18, 2022

In his first year leading a publicly traded company, Endeavor founder and CEO Ari Emanuel received a pay package that topped $308 million, thanks almost entirely to a one-time restricted stock grant, which is tied to performance.

In its annual report with the SEC, Endeavor notes that Emanuel’s realized 2021 compensation was closer to $67 million, reflecting his salary, bonus and equity awards that had vested. Emanuel receives a base salary of $4 million, with an annual target bonus of $6 million. The remainder of his compensation is almost all stock, $293.7 million in equity awards, the value at the time of the grant.

Major corporate events like an IPO or merger often supercharge senior executive pay, with companies frequently locking in executives to long-term deals at the same time, and issuing restricted stock that vests based on time or share price performance. Endeavor, of course, went public through an IPO last year.

And so it is that Emanuel would join another entertainment CEO who received a significant performance-based stock grant in 2021: Discovery CEO David Zaslav, whose 2021 pay package topped $246 million thanks to a new long-term contract that he signed in conjunction with Discovery’s impending merger with WarnerMedia. Like Emanuel, Zaslav may or may not see the full value of that grant.

And Emanuel’s role as founder of the company also aligns with similar compensation plans for founders of companies that went public. In 2018, Elon Musk was granted shares (worth around $2.5 billion at the time) that inflated his compensation package as disclosed to the SEC. And Palantir founder Alex Karp received a package worth $1.1 billion in 2020, which, like Emanuel’s, comprised unvested stock tied to the company’s IPO.

“While such awards could result in substantial compensation to our executives, we believe they further align our CEO and Executive Chairman with our shareholders’ interests,” Endeavor wrote in its annual report, including charts showing what performance metrics need to be met for the shares to vest. “Our Chief Executive Officer and Executive Chairman will only realize value with respect to their performance stock units if our stock price increases in value, and thus a large part of their compensation is ‘at risk.’”

Other Endeavor executives also received significant stock grants tied to the IPO. Endeavor executive chairman Patrick Whitesell saw his 2021 pay package top $123 million, thanks to a similar grant. The company says that its recognized compensation was actually $11 million.

Endeavor president Mark Shapiro’s total 2021 pay package was $42 million with the one-time grant, with recognized compensation of $17.4 million, while CFO Jason Lublin’s total compensation was $18 million, with recognized pay of $7.1 million.

The pay packages are all substantially higher than 2020, which was not only pre-IPO, but also saw top executives forgo their salaries for much of the year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Endeavor’s annual report, Emanuel’s 2020 total compensation was $14.4 million, while Whitesell earned $3.2 million.

Public companies typically disclose senior executive pay in annual proxy filings, though Endeavor hasn’t yet filed its proxy for 2021.