The Condé-WarnerMount C.E.O. Shuffle

Dylan Byers (0:00)

One of the hazards of doing multiple back-to-back mergers is that you've got like multiple people in the same roles, you don't know what's happening, you've got multiple streaming services, multiple news networks. At a certain point, it's going to become a lot clearer once we have that org chart in place and once we know who reports to who, and then we'll really begin to understand how this company is going to run.

Peter Hamby (0:20)

Welcome to The Powers That Be Daily, Puck's podcast focused on the intersection of Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood and the players who run it all. I'm Peter Hamby. It's Thursday, October 1st. Today, I'm joined by Dylan Byers to examine some big leadership changes at Paramount Warner Brothers and Condé Nast, and both of them come back to the toy giant Mattel. Now that the Paramount Warner Brothers deal is officially done, David Ellison announced this week that he's tapped outgoing Mattel leader Ynon Kreiz as his co-CEO.

Meanwhile, Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch announced he's leaving the media company and taking Kreiz job as the leader of Mattel. We'll discuss all that and Hot Wheels and He-Man on today's episode of The Powers That Be.

Happy Thursday everybody and welcome to The Powers That Be. It's a big media week, so I got my guy Dylan Byers here. The Paramount Warners deal has been signed off on by the judge that was presiding over the antitrust court case. It is happening.

And on the heels of that on Wednesday, some big news came out about who's going to be running the new show or at least having a hand in running the new show. And it all comes back to Mattel, Land of Barbie, Hot Wheels, Barney, He-Man. Ynon Kreiz just left Mattel. He ran the company for several years. He's just got announced as the co-CEO of the new Paramount Warner Brothers entity. There's another Mattel angle here too, which is that Roger Lynch stepped down from Condé Nast. He will be going to run Mattel. That's a big swing from New York City to Smell Segundo out here. Roger, if you're listening, I know some good spots to get a beer over there in the Gundo. But Dylan, let's start with, I guess, the deal being closed in the Ynon news. Why was he hired? It's my understanding that Ynon was brought on at Mattel to transform the company just from a toy company into an IP-driven, almost like media organization. And clearly, we saw that with the Barbie movie. They've licensed a lot of their IP to make some more movies. I think there's actually a Barney movie coming, a Hot Wheels movie coming. Why Ynon at this time?

Dylan Byers (2:46)

Yeah, well, look, a lot of people asking that question. Ynon is not as well known to everyone as your average media executive. And there's good reason for that. We don't cover the toy making industry here at Puck Peter, although maybe that'll be a future vertical for us.

That said, he is a fixture among what I like to think of as like the Sun Valley crowd or the Polo Lounge crew, right? Like these guys all know him. They're all friends with him. A lot of people respect him and say he is a very formidable executive. And you're right, he was brought to Mattel. He had media experience before Mattel, brought to Mattel to effectively leverage the IP. How did he do? Depends on who you ask. Was Barbie a mega box office hit? Absolutely. Did that necessarily confer value back to Mattel?

The stock price would suggest no, he was there for eight years and the stock was effectively down. So not great. On the other hand, like seems to come in a lot of respect, certainly knows how to cut, which is going to be very significant at Paramount Warner Brothers Discovery, because there's going to be thousands of jobs that are going to have to be lost.

Peter Hamby (3:51)

There were a lot of layoffs at Mattel over the last several years.

Dylan Byers (3:55)

There were a lot of layoffs at Mattel. As one source told me, he cut to the bone.

Again, look, mixed track record at Mattel, water under the bridge now, I guess, he has this new job. I think what's significant about this, Peter, the co-CEO role.

First of all, it's David's company. At the end of the day, David's the CEO. But the co-CEO role is significant because one thing that David has done to his credit is he's shown enough self-awareness to say, hey, I'm a 40-year-old, 40-something-year-old who doesn't totally understand how to run a company of this size and I need professional CEOs in place to help me out. And if you look back to when he got Paramount, he brought in Jeff Schell, who was once the head of NBC Universal, to help him out. Jeff didn't really have a role of this stature. He was president, but no one actually reported to him and what authority he had versus sort of advisory role was never quite clear to me. This is like a formal co-CEO title. He will have authority, he will have direct reports, and the onus will be on him, on Ynon, to really run the business on a day-to-day level so that David can do whatever it is that David does.