When speaking about David Zaslav, even the most cynical executives can barely restrain themselves from gushing. Lloyd Blankfein, the former Goldman Sachs chief executive, struggles to think of something critical, or even neutral, to say about his longtime friend.
“I normally don’t like people. He’s kind of an exception. I find it hard to be snarky about him,” Blankfein says. “If you go out to dinner, he wears those stupid insignia vests?.?.?.?He’s got that ‘golly gee’ aspect and he’s so enthusiastic that sometimes I get tired just talking to him. I have to rest up. But it’s all positive.”
That Tiggerish energy, cut with relentless ambition, this week helped Zaslav engineer the media coup of the decade: not only uniting his much smaller Discovery group with WarnerMedia, but then taking command of the combined entity, the world’s second-biggest entertainment company by revenue.