As WarnerMedia continues to implement its restructuring plan, select Turner employees have been offered voluntary buyouts, following the same model of the plan introduced last month by HBO.
Angela Santone, EVP and head of HR for Turner, sent a memo today to employees, according to a Turner insider. The memo outlined the opportunity for workers 55 years old and older with 10 or more years of service as of the end of 2019. Workers who accept the voluntary offer will receive four weeks pay for every year of service, up to a limit of two years pay.
WarnerMedia declined to comment when contacted by Deadline.
Turner is undergoing significant changes under a reshuffling announced last month by CEO John Stankey. The makeover began in earnest once the federal government lost its appeal of a lawsuit challenging AT&Ts $81 billion takeover of Time Warner. While the deal was permitted to officially close last June by a federal judge, who rejected the Department of Justice lawsuit, the appeals process restrained the company from operating as a fully merged entity.
Under the terms of a settlement with the DOJ, Turner remained in a silo pending the outcome of the appeal. That eight-month delay created a bottleneck, a series of announcements has been flooding out almost daily about comings and goings. In recent weeks, Turner boss David Levy, a 32-year company veteran, said he was stepping down, and the company put CNN chief Jeff Zucker in charge of Turner as well as CNN. Richard Plepler and two senior executives have left the fold at HBO, and those exits are unlikely to be the last as changes continue to take full effect.
John Stephens, CFO of AT&T, told a Wall Street investor conference last month that the parent company would seek to shield WarnerMedia from “a finance bean-counter from a telephone company.” At the same time, AT&T still has billions in debt from the Time Warner deal it is looking to pay down, as it also looks to hit announced targets of $1.5 billion in cost savings and $1 billion in synergies. Many operations in areas like distribution and marketing at Turner and HBO have been consolidated. Part of the Turner network portfolio, including Cartoon Network and Adult Swim, shifted to Warner Bros. control in the reorg., putting a greater emphasis on CNN, TNT and TBS as Turners main profit centers.
The Wall Street Journal had the first report on the Turner buyoRead More – Source
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