John Stankey Biography
John Stankey is a businessman leads AT&T as CEO. He was CEO of WarnerMedia prior to becoming president and COO of AT&T. In 2015 and 2018, Stankey oversaw AT&T’s acquisitions of Time Warner and DirecTV, respectively. In July 2020, he succeeded Randall L. Stephenson as CEO of AT&T.
Age
He is 62 years old as of 2024. He was born in 1962 in California, United States.
Parents and Siblings
Stankey, the youngest of three children, grew up in Los Angeles. His mother was a homemaker, and his father worked as an insurance underwriter.
Education
Stankey graduated from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles in 1985 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, majoring in finance. In 1991, he graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a Master of Business Administration.
Net Worth
John has an estimated net worth of $36 million. Stankey was compensated US$22.5 million in the 2019 fiscal year and US$21 million in the 2020 fiscal year.
Stankey Work
Stankey started at Pacific Bell in 1985, which was later purchased by SBC Communications in 1996. After starting as the Executive Vice President of Industry Markets in 1998, Stankey was promoted to the position of Executive President of Industry Markets in 2000. Stankey joined SBC Southwest as president and CEO in 2001.
Stankey held several senior executive positions within the company before taking on the role of CSO and group president of AT&T in January 2012. Stankey served as CIO of the “new AT&T” following the finalization of SBC’s merger with AT&T Corporation in 2005. He also rose to the position of senior executive vice president and CTO for AT&T from 2008 to 2012.
In 2014, Stankey began serving on the UPS board of directors, a role he would keep until 2020. Stankey was appointed CEO of WarnerMedia in 2018, the company that controls CNN, HBO, Warner Bros., and Turner Broadcasting System, among other media and film companies. Stankey started serving as AT&T’s COO on October 1, 2019, while he was still WarnerMedia’s CEO. AT&T declared on April 1, 2020, that Stankey will be leaving his position as WarnerMedia CEO. With effect from May 1, 2020, Jason Kilar, a former CEO of Hulu, took over and reported to Stankey. Stankey succeeded Randall L. Stephenson as CEO of AT&T Inc. on July 1, 2020.
Stankey supervised the $16.25 billion sale of AT&T’s third-party DirecTV interest to TPG Capital in February 2021. In order to buy DirecTV in 2015, AT&T had to pay 48 billion ($67 billion including debt). Additionally, Stankey managed the May 2021 sale of WarnerMedia to Discovery Inc. for an anticipated $59 billion in Discovery, Inc. stock in addition to $43 billion in cash. For WarnerMedia, AT&T spent $85 billion in 2018.
AT&T declared on April 30, 2021, that a slim majority of shareholders had rejected the company’s executive remuneration proposal in a nonbinding vote. AT&T was said to have “lost [US]$5.4 billion and cut thousands of jobs” prior to this.