Skydance Names Finance Team After Paramount-WBD Merger

Skydance Corp., the company formed from David Ellison's Paramount–Warner Bros. Discovery merger, named its finance leadership team on Wednesday — the group now responsible for helping deliver a projected $6 billion in annualized cost savings, an effort expected to include several rounds of layoffs.

CFO Dennis Cinelli, formerly Paramount Skydance's finance chief, announced the appointments in a memo to staff, a copy of which was obtained by Variety. The combined Paramount-WBD carries annual revenue of nearly $70 billion on a pro-forma basis and net debt of around $80 billion, according to the company's figures.

"Today we're announcing the leadership team for Skydance Finance. Each of these leaders brings the experience and judgment to help us build something exceptional, and I'm excited to work alongside them and to share where I think we can take this team from here," Cinelli wrote.

He thanked employees who "put in extraordinary effort to support the acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery" and told the legacy WBD finance team: "you kept the business performing through a long period of not knowing how this would end. That takes discipline, and it didn't go unnoticed."

The appointments follow the senior leadership team Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz announced one day before the deal officially closed. Since then, business units have been filling out their own executive ranks.

Who now runs Skydance Finance?

The corporate leaders, per Cinelli's memo:

• Kevin Creighton, EVP, Corporate Finance & Treasury — leads corporate finance, treasury, strategic finance, plus the FP&A and Content Finance and Strategy centers of excellence; oversees investor relations on an interim basis while a permanent IR head is found.
• Fraser Woodford, EVP, Treasury at WBD — stays through the end of March 2027 to transition work to Creighton's organization and help find his successor.
• Todd Davis, EVP, Head of Global Tax — tax strategy, planning and compliance across all businesses and jurisdictions.
• Kathy Gill-Charest, EVP, Controller & Chief Accounting Officer — global accounting, financial reporting and internal controls.
• Sandy Pundmann, EVP & Chief Audit Risk Officer — internal audit and risk.
• Simon Robinson, EVP & Chief Business Transformation Officer — heads the Integration Management Office coordinating integration "to help us combine our businesses smoothly and capture the full value of the transaction."

Eleven business-unit CFOs will dual-report to Cinelli and their respective unit heads: Mark Badagliacca (Film, plus the participations and residuals COE, co-leading production finance), Patrick Cavanaugh (Distribution), Nitin Chawla (Global Content Sales, covering licensing and home entertainment), Adam Cohn (CNN), Eric Gray (TV Studios, co-leading production finance), Christine Hong (Advertising and Head of Revenue Operations), Kedar Nadkarni (Consumer Products, Publishing and DC Comics, continuing under Josh Silverman), Ben Paul (Games & Experiences), Josh Walker (Streaming) and Liz Wright (global television networks).

Separately, Bryon Rubin steps out as CFO of TV Media to become COO of Skydance Television.

What does this change for the merger?

The structure signals where the pressure will land: every named CFO now sits inside a unit expected to contribute to the $6 billion savings target, and the memo leaves no ambiguity about what comes next. "As you've heard David [Ellison] say, our goal is to become the next-generation media and entertainment company. We'll only get there if Finance operates at the highest level and helps drive the business. Every greenlight decision, technology investment, partnership deal and number reported externally depends on the quality of your work," Cinelli wrote.

He also laid out six guiding "pillars" for the organization:

• Nail the basics — accurate, fast closes; full compliance on SEC reporting, tax and internal audit.
• Set plans — financial and strategic plans that align the company and drive accountability.
• Partner deeply — finance leaders embedded with business partners with an owner-operator mindset: "We think like we own the P&L, because we do."
• Decide with data and AI — democratize data across the company, automate routine work, combine operating and financial KPIs to make better investment trade-offs.
• Tell the story — be financial and strategic storytellers to stakeholders and investors.
• Build a talent factory — incubate finance talent into company leadership.

"There will be challenges as we integrate businesses and keep raising the bar, but I have great confidence in this team. What we do matters, and how we do it matters even more," Cinelli wrote.

The pledge is confident; the layoffs embedded in the savings plan are the part no memo spells out. With Woodford's exit dated and an IR head still unfilled, the first test of the new structure will be whether the integration office can deliver savings without destabilizing the businesses it is consolidating.