The first big management redundancy at Paramount’s local operation has been identified.

The Company that owns free to air TV station Network Ten has parted ways with its local chief operating officer Jarrod Villani following a global bid to axe 800 jobs.

Villani, who was co-lead of Paramount Australia and New Zealand alongside chief content officer Beverley McGarvey since February 2021 is set to leave the business immediately.

Questions are now being asked as to whether McGarvey and her legal team will survive the axing of senior management.

Pam Kaufman, Paramount’s president and CEO of international markets, said in a statement: “While this is a difficult moment, I want to emphasise that I believe in our global strategy, and I am confident that the Paramount Australia team will continue to drive the business forward to meet our goals across this critical and priority market.”

Earlier today we revealed that a major investor in Paramount Global the owner of Network 10 and Paramount + have started to dump stock in the global business, the latest is Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Group, now there are calls for management sackings at Ten after Wilkinson debacle.

According to Wall Street reports Buffet has sold a third of its stake in embattled media giant Paramount, this sent the stock into freefall with the value of their shares plummeting more than 7% in after-hours trading.

In Australia Network Ten that is owned by Paramount, is in the middle of a crisis after former on air personality Lisa Wilkinson had a bruising win in the Federal Court after mounting a case to get the struggling network to pay her million-dollar costs of defending Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation case.

The US parent Company of the Ten Network, has already moved to sack over 800 people, including employees at Network Ten who are now facing questions, as to why their legal department and the CEO of the network Bev McGarvey approved a Wilkinson speech praising Brittany Higgins who was involved in a high-profile rape case.

CEO of the Ten network Bev McGarvey

Information exposed during the Wilkinson Court case, revealed network’s senior litigator Tasha Smithies and CEO Bev McGarvey approved the speech before it was delivered.

Also involved in the approving of the speech was the network’s senior legal officer, Mr Farley.

The 2022 speech led to Wilkinson being widely condemned after the rape trial of ex-Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann’s was delayed as a result.

Wilkinson told a Federal Court judge this week that the speech had been pre-approved by Ten’s senior legal counsel, Tasha Smithies.

It was also approved by Beverley McGarvey, and head of communications, Catherine Donovan.

Insiders concerned over their jobs at the network have told ChannelNews that the executives “who stuffed” up in approving the speech should be the first to go if pink slips are being handed out by Parmount at the network.

Berkshire Hathaway disclosed the sale its latest 13F filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday.

Berkshire Hathaway got into the Paramount business in 2022 with a $2.6 billion stock buy amounting to 15% of the company, a purchase that sent Paramount stock soaring at the time.

The business still owns roughly 63.3 million shares of Paramount following the sale.

In addition to Paramount, Berkshire reduced its stake in HP and Apple, which remains a top holding.

The news comes one day after Paramount Global, whose shares have dropped 46% in the past year, announced mass layoffs that will affect Australian employees.

Paramount also owns CBS, Comedy Central, BET and the Paramount film studio, among other properties.