One year later: Icahn gets his stock price -- without breaking up TWX

It has been a year since Carl Icahn went to investment bank Lazard and asked the company to put together a valuation of Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX) based on three methods of coming at the number. Lazard looked at each division and set a high and low value for the company's operations: Content, cable, publishing and AOL. The report ran 371 pages. Before saving for corporate general and administrative costs, Lazard said that the company was worth between $21.46 and $24.49.

TWX shares are lately trading around $22.50. Mr. Icahn got his wish, at least in part. And the company did not have to be broken into pieces to realize the value.

Still, it is interesting to look now at the Lazard value for each unit. Lazard combined the studio unit with the cable content operation (CNN, Turner) and came up with a value range of $55.9 billion to $61.4 billion. Cable's valuation was $43.3 billion to $48.5 billion.

AOL's value was put at $17.5 billion to $21 billion. That was before the decision to transform the operation into an advertising supported model, moving away from the Internet access business. The publishing unit was valued at $12.7 billion to $14.2 billion.

Lazard then subtracted the parent company's $30.5 billion in debt (only seems fair), to arrive at its valuation.

Time Warner's stock price got where Mr. Icahn wanted it to go. It only took a year, the company is still in one piece. And think of the investment banking fees he saved.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.