AT&T Names Samuel Di Piazza Chairman of Warner Bros. Discovery

variety.com:

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorSamuel Di Piazza Jr. will serve as the chairman of Warner Bros. Discovery following the close of the deal to combine the two media companies, AT&T announced.Di Piazza, previously global CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers from 2002 until his retirement in 2009, was among the seven board members of the combined WarnerMedia-Discovery that AT&T announced Tuesday.

The Warner Bros. Discovery board of directors will comprise 13 members, seven appointed by AT&T and six by Discovery.Following the approval of the Discovery-WarnerMedia merger by Discovery shareholders last week, the $43 billion deal is expected to close early in the second quarter.The seven directors appointed by AT&T are: DiPiazza; Li Haslett Chen, founder and CEO of commerce and payments platform Narrativ; Richard Fisher, senior adviser to Barclays and former president/CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas; Debra Lee, previously chair and CEO of BET Networks; Fazal Merchant, senior adviser to Sixth Street Partners; Paula Price, most recently EVP and CFO of Macy’s; and Geoff Yang, founding partner and managing director of Redpoint Ventures.

DiPiazza, Lee and Yang currently serve on the AT&T board of directors and will resign those positions at the close of the Discovery transaction.

Following their departure, AT&T expects to reduce the number of board directors from 13 to 10, “reflecting the company’s more focused business model.”Discovery’s designated members, as previously announced, are: David Zaslav, who is set to become president and CEO of Warner Bros.