December 12th, 2005
AOL Co-Founder Calls for Split of Time Warner
Before Time Warner reach a decision on a big alliance with Google or Microsoft for its America Online unit, Stephen M. Case, the co-founder of AOL, has spoken out against the plan, aligning himself with the thinking of the financier Carl C. Icahn, who has pushed for a breakup of Time Warner.
Mr. Case, who recently resigned as a Time Warner director, wrote in an essay in The Washington Post on Sunday that “although I played a key role in bringing AOL and Time Warner together six years ago, it’s now my view that it would be best to ‘undo’ the merger by splitting Time Warner into several independent companies and allowing AOL to set off on its own path.”
His comments came after a week of increasingly vituperative and personal attacks between Mr. Icahn, who directly and indirectly controls 3 percent of the company’s shares, and Richard D. Parsons, Time Warner’s chief executive.
The sniping has gone far beyond the norm in corporate takeover battles and has framed the question of how the world’s largest media company should shape its future. Time Warner, like the rest of the industry, is trying to make calculated bets about how information will be created and delivered in coming decades. And Mr. Parsons is under increasing pressure to justify to investors that it makes sense to keep a diverse company with $40 billion in annual sales intact, at a time when some other media conglomerates are splitting up or shedding assets. via
