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Gerald Levin was a visionary early executive at HBO whose career would be forever damaged after he orchestrated the merger of Time Warner and AOL that destroyed reduced the value of employee retirement accounts and ultimately resulted in a historic $100 billion writedown. , already dead. He is 84 years old.
Levine died at the hospital on Wednesday, his grandson Jack Maia Allo told New York Times. He has been battling Parkinson’s disease since being diagnosed in 2006. Arlo added that he lives in Long Beach, California.
Levin, a lawyer, worked in Iran for a year before joining HBO as a programming executive at its launch in 1972. A year later, he was promoted to CEO, and a year later he convinced parent company Time Inc. to bring HBO to cable companies nationwide via satellite technology, earning him the nickname “The Resident Genius.”
The Philadelphia native and Penn Law graduate was elected to Time magazine’s board of directors in 1988 and quickly helped the company acquire Warner Communications Inc. for $14 billion, adding Warner Bros. and Warner Music.
In early 1992, Levine was named co-chief executive of Time Warner along with Steven J. Ross, a title he took on himself after Ross died of prostate cancer 10 months later.
Time Warner faltered during Levine’s early tenure, but he impressed Wall Street with the 1996 acquisition of Turner Broadcasting System, which added CNN, TNT, Traditional Chinese Medicine and Cartoon Network join the group’s growing list of properties. The merger also allowed Warner Bros. to restore the rights to pre-1950 films (which Turner had purchased years earlier) and made media mogul Ted Turner a board member and a major shareholder in Time Warner.
In 1997, Levine’s son Jonathan, a 31-year-old high school English teacher in the Bronx, was murdered by a former student who tortured him at knifepoint until he handed over his bank ATM card PIN. Friends called the tragedy a “defining moment” for Levin, already known for quoting Greek philosophers and the Bible, as he began brainstorming ideas to leave an inspirational, transformative legacy through his leadership of Time Warner. World Heritage.
“Levine portrays himself as a man of knowledge and integrity who happens to be the CEO of the world’s largest media company. He wants to be remembered not just as a CEO who improved the bottom line, but also as a CEO who improved the bottom line. Him. He longed to be more famous,” Nina Munk She wrote in her 2004 book, Fools flock: Steve Case, Jerry Levin and the fall of AOL Time Warner.
in late period 1990sLevine rightly believed that the web would forever change the way media was delivered, and sought a dramatic approach for Time Warner, which had been beset by its own lackluster digital initiatives, such as entertainment and a comprehensive service network.
After months of negotiations between Levine and AOL CEO Steve Case, they agreed to merge the two companies, with 55% owned by AOL shareholders and 45% owned by Time Warner shareholders. The latter is much larger on every metric (for example, annual revenue of $27 billion versus $5 billion) except market capitalization, which is how much Wall Street values each share of the company’s stock.
By the time the merger was announced in early 2000, AOL’s 17 million customers had grown impatient with slow dial-up Internet providers and would soon be switching in droves to high-speed cable providers such as then-owned Time Warner Cable is of course owned by Time Warner.
After the merger, Levine promised that synergies and the rapid growth of the Internet would soon bring $40 billion in revenue and $11 billion in cash flow to the newly established AOL Time Warner. However, the company was hit hard by the bursting of the stock bubble, falling advertising rates, and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
In May 2002, Levine resigned as CEO of AOL Time Warner and was replaced by Richard Parsons. In the same year, the company reported a loss of $100 billion, the largest loss in U.S. corporate history. A year later, Parsons dropped AOL from the company’s name.
It wasn’t until a few years after Levine left that the company’s stock price hit rock bottom, with the company then known as Time Warner losing 92%. Levine went on CNBC in 2010 to apologize to shareholders, especially those who had lost their money. Stock employees. The value of their jobs or retirement accounts plummeted.
“Obviously, I presided over the worst trade of the century…I’ve obviously been reflecting on that,” he told CNBC host Joe core. “I am deeply sorry for the pain and loss this has caused.”
Lately, Levine has been encouraging media moguls — and CEOs in general — to push for social change without fear of offending Wall Street, and several of the issues he was passionate about during his lifetime were overall health care and gun control. He described himself as “a devout religious vegetarian” in a June 2016 interview hollywood reporter.
“How do you prove that an assault rifle is a valid Second Amendment tool? Let’s hear from some of the people who lead our companies,” Levine said in that interview, which took place two weeks after Omar took office. of. Martin 49 people died at a gay nightclub in Orlando. “Every time a murder or massacre happens, I’m reminded of what my own family went through, and every time I hope we can do something.”
In 2004, Levin married his third wife, Dr. Laurie Ann Levin, a former producer, agent, and the wife of producer Jack wife rapehe has been helping her run moonscape Sanctuary is a luxury holistic healing practice she founded in Santa Monica in 1998.He also supports start up Health invests in the next generation of health plans, and he brought Case on as an investor.
Levine is also a senior adviser to Oasis Television, which has been trying to establish itself as a television content provider for the spa crowd.
Levine went public with his Parkinson’s disease shortly after Robin Williams committed suicide in 2014, in part because Williams was depressed and believed he was in the early stages of the disease. (A later autopsy revealed the comedian actually suffered from Louis physical dementia, not Parkinson’s disease).
“I’ve been trained not to show my emotions. You can’t tell what I’m thinking by looking at me because I’m an ace negotiator. I mean, life is a game of poker. What a scary thing. So I’m not going to let Parkinson’s dominate my life,” he said. THR.
“I would love to open a treatment center that would provide treatment to everyone in the world. Not just for addiction, depression, mental health issues or Alzheimer’s disease. Everyone needs help.”
Levine was married to Carol Needleman and Barbara Riley had five children, including the late son Jonathan.
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