Vice Media Paid Its Executives $11 Million as Company Went Bankrupt

Vice Media paid their executives a whopping $11 million from May 2022 to May 2023 in the year before the company filed bankruptcy, court documents show.

According to a filing, executive VP Subrata De received $779,365 in compensation, chief operating officer Cory Haik $726,068, and before his departure from his role as global president of news and entertainment, Jesse Angelo got $815,254 in pay, including bonuses.

The document also included bulky compensation for chief creative officer Chris Garbutt ($874,258) and chief marketing officer Nadja White ($834,931).

Vice, which filed for Chapter 11 in May, is currently undergoing a prepackaged bankruptcy process at the end of which a consortium led by Fortress Investment Group will acquire the company. At its peak, Vice was valued to be worth nearly $6 billion. It is now under a crushing amount of debt.

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On Monday, Vice reporter Joseph Cox unloaded screenshots of the company’s bankruptcy proceedings on social media, including compensation details of the executives who “led Vice to bankruptcy.”

“It’s worse than I thought,” Cox wrote in reference to the compensation made to Vice executives.

The Writers Guild of America, released a statement from the members in the Vice Union in response to the document, calling out the “bad business decisions made by management,” which “ultimately bankrupted,” the company.

“We’ve now learned that on the same day that Union members were laid off,” the WGA continued. “Vice’s management shamelessly rewarded themselves with nearly a million dollars in bonus pay. We are outraged.”

“It’s unfair and it’s terrible for employee morale,” the statement concluded.

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