Steve Case is "sorry" for the AOL merger with Time Warner (TWX). That's what he said to Charlie Rose Friday. I've seen this characterized as a Steve Case "apology" (to shareholders who lost about $200 billion in share value, I guess) but I read it more as a regret things didn't work out as he expected. Apologies don't usually include the statements like Case's that he still thinks the merger was "a good idea."Now we have left the bubble long behind us. With hindsight it is certainly easy to beat up on the guy, and that's been a lot of fun for a lot of pundits since 2001. Trying to look back on my own feelings about it at the time, I thought the deal would be a bad one for competition, part of the inevitable, but disturbing gathering of the reigns of large corporations into fewer and fewer hands, but -- much as cringe to admit it -- I never imagined the deal would be disastrous for AOL and Time Warner Inc. themselves.
I'm wondering what BloggingStocks reader think. Did you believe back in 2001 was Case making the right decision by merging Time Warner into his AOL? Or did you believe even then the merger was headed for disaster?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-24-2006 @ 4:04PM
Damon Draught said...
I know that Mr. Case know that it was a great deal for AOL. I have a business degree and working on my masters in Finance and I could tell at the time that AOL was buying a company that had a good group of business and AOL was in a business that was on the decline because they could not get deals with cable or telephone companies at the time. I am a TMX shareholder will continue to my more because Mr. Case knew he had a good deal in the Time Warner assest and AOL would be doing worse if it was a stand alone company, but all the value of aol is out of the stock right now and with because of the drop and the buy back so you are getting aol for free and time warner at a lower price so I am going to continue to buy the stock.
7-24-2006 @ 4:41PM
Edie Allen said...
I do not have a business degree, however, I have worked in the business world all my life. When I saw the announcement that AOL & Time Warner were merging I knew instantly that Steve Case had made a horrendous mistake - and it has been proven that he did.
7-24-2006 @ 10:31PM
Danny West said...
Well first of all if these guy's at TWX knew what they were doing, the first thing they would have done is made Road Runner the pipline and AOL would have been the main site for who ever used RR. Second they should have made deals with all the cable company's to offer AOL as there main site and in return give a % of some of the advertising. Second all, the content that TWX has should have been incorporated so AOL would have been offering more. And if current management had any vision they might have bought OVERTURE, or GOOGLE back then.
Current management is experimenting more than anything at the moment. Maybe they'll stumble across something that might click.
But the real truth is Parson's is not the right man to run such a company that requires vision.
Having said allth this. With out AOL, stock price should be in the 20's, Cable alone is worth around 40 billion.............What a shame..........Danny