Gerald M. Levin, the former CEO of Time Warner who oversaw the disastrous merger with AOL has since gone down as one of the worst deals in American corporate history, died Wednesday of undisclosed causes. He was 84.
One of his grandchildren confirmed the news to the New York Times and said that Levin had been fighting Parkinson’s disease and died in a hospital in Long Beach, California.
The merger that created AOL Time Warner, one of the most enduring symbols of the excesses and recklessness of the Dot Com era, could not have been more poorly timed. Announced on January 10, 2000 at the height of the dot com bubble, the deal was supposed to combine the then-leader in the still emerging internet service provider industry with the at-the-time largest media company in the world — whose assets included Time Magazine, Warner Bros.
Leave a Reply