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Hofstra University School of Law
Legal Studies Research Paper Series
Research Paper No. 05-21
AOL Time Warner and the
Matthew T. Bodie
False God of Shareholder Primacy
August 2005
AOL TIME WARNER AND THE FALSE GOD OF SHAREHOLDER PRIMACY
Matthew T. Bodie*
The merger between America Online (AOL) and Time Warner is
almost universally regarded as a disaster.1 Announced at the beginning of
2000, the combination was heralded as ushering in a new era of Internet
dominance. After all, AOL – a company only fifteen years old – was taking a
majority stake in the merger with perhaps the preeminent entertainment and
media company of the era. AOL had bought Time Warner! If further proof of
the triumph of clicks over bricks had been necessary, the merger sealed the
deal.
But only two months later, the tech market took its first major hit and
never recovered. And at the end of 2003, shareholders in AOL Time Warner
had lost over $200 billion in equity value.2 By then the chief architects of the
deal – Time Warner’s Gerald Levin and AOL’s Stephen Case – had left the
company, along with most of the former AOL executives who had initially run
the combined company. Fines to the SEC for accounting improprieties topped
$300 million,3 $3 billion will be paid to settle civil class action suits,4 and in
2002 the company suffered a historic $99 billion write-down in good will.
Even the name was changed – starting out as AOL Time Warner, the
company’s board later elected to drop the “AOL,” as if to purge ...