{"id":612649,"date":"2024-03-14T05:30:40","date_gmt":"2024-03-14T02:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/gerald-levin-architect-of-disastrous-aol-time-warner-merger-dies-at-84\/"},"modified":"2024-03-14T05:30:40","modified_gmt":"2024-03-14T02:30:40","slug":"gerald-levin-architect-of-disastrous-aol-time-warner-merger-dies-at-84","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/gerald-levin-architect-of-disastrous-aol-time-warner-merger-dies-at-84\/","title":{"rendered":"#Gerald Levin, Architect of Disastrous AOL-Time Warner Merger, Dies at 84"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Gerald Levin, the visionary executive in the early days of HBO whose career will be forever marred after he orchestrated the merger of Time Warner and AOL, a debacle that destroyed the value of employees\u2019 retirement accounts and culminated in a historic $100 billion write-down, has died. He was 84.<\/p>\n

Levin died Wednesday in a hospital, his grandchild Jake Maia Arlow told The New York Times<\/em><\/a>. He had battled Parkinson\u2019s disease since being diagnosed in 2006. Arlow added that he lived in Long Beach, California.<\/p>\n

Levin was an attorney who worked for a year in Iran before joining HBO at its inception in 1972 as a programming executive. He was promoted to CEO a year later, and a year after that he convinced parent company Time Inc. to take HBO to cable companies nationwide via satellite technology<\/a>, earning him the nickname of \u201cresident genius.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Philadelphia native and University of Pennsylvania Law School graduate was elected a Time board member in 1988 and quickly helped arrange the company\u2019s $14 billion acquisition of Warner Communications, bringing Warner Bros. and Warner Music into the fold.<\/p>\n

Levin was named co-CEO of Time Warner along with Steven J. Ross in early 1992, then had the title for himself when Ross died 10 months later from prostate cancer.<\/p>\n

Time Warner meandered under Levin\u2019s early tenure, but he impressed Wall Street in 1996 by acquiring Turner Broadcasting System, thus adding CNN, TNT, TCM<\/span> and Cartoon Network to the conglomerate\u2019s growing list of assets. The merger also returned to Warner Bros. rights to its pre-1950 movies<\/a>, which Turner had purchased years earlier, and it made media<\/a> mogul Ted Turner a board member and primary Time Warner shareholder.<\/p>\n

In 1997, Levin\u2019s son Jonathan, a 31-year-old high school English teacher in the Bronx, was murdered by a former student who tortured him with a knife until he surrendered the password to his bank ATM card. Friends called the tragedy a \u201cdefining moment\u201d for Levin, who already had a reputation for quoting Greek philosophers and the Bible, and he began brainstorming ways to leave an inspiring, world-changing legacy through his leadership of Time Warner.<\/p>\n

\u201cLevin presented himself as a scholarly, upright man who just happ<\/a>ened to be the CEO of the world\u2019s largest media company. He didn\u2019t just want to be remembered as a CEO who\u2019d improved the bottom line; he aspired to be known for so much more,\u201d Nina Munk<\/span> wrote in her 2004 book, Fools Rush In: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Unmaking of AOL Time Warner<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In the late 1990s<\/span>, Levin figured, correctly, that the Internet would forever alter the way media was delivered and sought a dramatic way in for Time Warner, which had stumbled with its own lackluster digital initiatives like Entertaindom<\/span> and Full Service Network.<\/p>\n

After months of negotiations between Levin and AOL CEO Steve Case, they agreed to merge the two companies, with 55 percent going to AOL\u2019s shareholders and 45 percent going to Time Warner\u2019s. The latter company was far bigger in every metric (annual revenue, for example, was $27 billion vs. $5 billion) except for one: market capitalization, which is the value Wall Street put on each of the company\u2019s shares.<\/p>\n

By the time the merger was announced in early 2000, AOL\u2019s 17 million subscribers already were growing impatient with slow, dial-up internet providers, and soon they\u2019d be fleeing in droves for high-speed cable providers like Time Warner Cable, owned then, of course, by Time Warner.<\/p>\n

After the merger, Levin pledged that synergies and the internet\u2019s rapid growth would quickly lead to $40 billion in revenue and $11 billion in cash flow for the newly minted AOL Time Warner. However, a bursting stock bubble, falling ad rates and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, devastated the company.<\/p>\n

Levin stepped down as CEO of AOL Time Warner in May 2002, replaced by Richard Parsons, and that year the company reported a $100 billion loss, the largest in the history of corporate America. A year later, Parsons removed AOL from the company name.<\/p>\n

At its nadir, which didn\u2019t come until several years after Levin\u2019s departure, shares of the company known again as Time Warner had lost 92 percent of their value, and Levin went on CNBC in 2010 to apologize to shareholders, in particular employees who lost their jobs or saw the value of their retirement accounts plummet.<\/p>\n

\u201cI presided over the worst deal of the century, apparently \u2026 I have obviously been reflecting on that,\u201d he told CNBC anchor Joe Kernen<\/span>. \u201cI\u2019m really very sorry about the pain and suffering and loss that was caused.\u201d<\/p>\n

More recently, Levin had been encouraging media moguls \u2014 and CEOs in general<\/a> \u2014 to push for social change and not worry about offending Wall Street, and a couple of issues he was passionate about before his death were holistic health care and gun control. He referred to himself as \u201ca dedicated, religious vegan\u201d in a June 2016 interview with The Hollywood Reporter<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow can you justify an assault rifle as being a valid Second Amendment instrument? Let\u2019s hear from some of the people that lead our companies what they believe,\u201d Levin said during that interview, which occurred two weeks after Omar Mateen<\/span> killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando. \u201cEvery time there is a murder or a mass killing, it brings back my own family\u2019s experience, and each time I hope that we are going to do something.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2004, Levin married his third wife, Dr. Laurie Ann Levin, a former producer, agent and wife of producer Jack Rapke<\/span>, and he had been helping her run Moonview<\/span> Sanctuary, a posh, holistic healing institute she founded in 1998 in Santa Monica. He also backed StartUp<\/span> Health, which invests in next-generation health initiatives, and he brought Case in as an investor as well.<\/p>\n

Levin also was a senior adviser to Oasis TV, which has been trying to establish itself as a provider of TV content for the spa crowd.<\/p>\n

Levin went public about suffering from Parkinson\u2019s disease shortly after Robin Williams committed suicide in 2014, in part because Williams was depressed and thought he was in the early stages of the same disease. (An autopsy later revealed that the comedian actually had suffered from Lewy<\/span> body dementia, not Parkinson\u2019s).<\/p>\n

\u201cI was trained not to show my emotions. You couldn\u2019t tell by looking at me what I was thinking because I was an ace negotiator. I mean, life was a poker game<\/a>. What a terrible thing. So I don\u2019t let Parkinson\u2019s dominate my life,\u201d he told THR<\/span><\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d love to open a treatment center that treats everybody in the world. Not just for addiction or depression or mental health issues or Alzheimer\u2019s. Everybody needs help.\u201d<\/p>\n

Levin was previously married to Carol Needelman<\/span> and Barbara Riley and had five children with them, including his late son Jonathan.<\/p><\/div>\n

If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

If you want to read more Like this articles, you can visit our Social Media category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gerald Levin, the visionary executive in the early days of HBO whose career will be forever marred after he orchestrated the merger of Time Warner and AOL, a debacle that destroyed the value of employees\u2019 retirement accounts and culminated in a historic $100 billion write-down, has died. He was 84. Levin died Wednesday in a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":612650,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Gerald-Levin-obit-getty-H-2024.jpg?w=1024","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[149254,5200,106156],"class_list":["post-612649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-gerald-levin","tag-obituaries","tag-time-warner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}