RSSAOL, Time Warner Agree To $350 Billion Merger
By Nate Mook | Published January 10, 2000, 3:28 PM
America Online, Inc. and Time Warner Inc. today announced that their boards of directors have agreed to a $350 billion merger that will create what they are hailing as "the world's first fully integrated media and communications company for the Internet Century."
The new company will be known as AOL Time Warner.
The official announcement was made today in a series of press
conferences in New York City. Meeting the press, and answering
questions, were Steve Case, chairman of the board and CEO of America
Online, Inc. (AOL), and Gerald M. Levin, chairman of the board and
CEO of Time Warner, as well as major Time Warner stockholder, Ted
Turner, and other top executives from both companies.
Steve Case, who will be the chairman of the board of the new company, was the first to speak, and acknowledged that AOL and Time Warner had already been partners in several ventures.
Case said that it was AOL's mission to make the Internet as central to people's lives as the telephone and television, and that this merger will help to make that vision a reality.
What this merger was about, Case said, was the convergence of communications with entertainment, and that the Internet is the vehicle that is revolutionizing both the way our society does business, and society itself.
Case stressed that the merger is all about serving consumers by providing them with new opportunities for shopping and entertainment, as well as with new opportunities to communicate.
However, Case also said that the true value of the merger couldn't be measured today, its true value lies in the vehicle for entertainment and communication that will evolve in the future, and that the merger will accelerate the Internet revolution.
Case also added some interesting personal insight to the merger process. He said that he and Time Warner chairman and CEO, Gerald Levin, had become personal friends over the past year, and that it was only last October when Case telephoned Levin and suggested that their two companies merge, with Case becoming chairman and Levin becoming CEO.
Case then introduced Gerald Levin who said the merger represented the "digital transformation of Time Warner," and that this was the realization of a dream of his. It was also significant, Levin said, that the merger announcement is occurring on the tenth anniversary, to the day, of the formation of Time Warner Inc.
Levin also stressed the fact that the merger of the two companies was a natural fit due to their both being "blue chip," "aggressive," and "hip." But, Levin also said that the two companies shared the same values and that they wanted to create a legacy, a "social destiny" to benefit the peoples of the world.
Levin specifically singled out the music portion of Time Warner's business that will benefit the most from the merger, and used as an example of the promotional compatibility of the two companies the cross-advertising that occurred in the Time Warner movie, "You've Got Mail," in which AOL's e-mail service played a leading role.
Turner said that he had signed the document committing him and his shareholdings to the merger at 9:00 PM EST Sunday night and that he had "not been as excited about anything since he first made love 42 years ago."
Turner said that the new company will be a much stronger company and that he was "very happy to be a part of it."
AOL President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) Bob Pittman, who will become co-COO of AOL Time Warner, followed Turner's remarks and said that the combined company would "serve the consumer at every level."
Pittman said that the merger represented a situation whereby "one plus one equaled three," and that AOL Time Warner would now have the best portfolio of content, brands and destination sites available anywhere.
Time Warner shareholders will receive 1.5 shares of stock in the new company for each share of Time Warner they own, while AOL shareholders will receive one share of AOL Time Warner stock for each share of AOL they now own.
Kelly also indicated that he expected all necessary shareholder and governmental approvals to be received, and the merger completed, by the end of this year.
Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com.
to think i was going to subscribe to RR soon... i rather use NetZero than use AOL
Score: 0
|I am now using Time Warner's Road Runner, I hope that there will be no change in the internet service or i will have to find my self a new high speed internet service.!!!
Score: 0
|Good! more bandwith for those of use who aren't afraid of change!
AOL DSL service btw is quite speedy...
This is great news for everyone AOL will be able to create competition for cable internet services... right now AOL only charges an additional $19.95 for the AOL DSL service... a service where you DON"T HAVE TO SIGN ON USING THE AOL SOFTWARE! Right when you turn on your computer you have net access. No Idle timers or anything! This is where AOL really shines. Broadband Access is the future and AOL is Jumping in headfirst... AOL even had a press release a while back about Dish broadband connections... and Nokia is making a phone that can send IMs... AOL already has an AOL Mail program that will let you check your mail with a palm pilot or windows ce device... and AOL has a strategic agreement with net2phone.. free calls to my folks back home :)
I have almost no respect for AOL bashers, almost all of them have no idea what they are talking about... the stock has treated me well
and I have never been more happy with the service I get.
-MikeGroovy
Score: 0
|It's amazing to me how quick the vast majority of readers of websites such as this one are to denounce large corporations. It is so plainly obvious to see that merger will be HUGELY beneficial for consumers. Stronger companies offer stronger products, forcing competition and innovation. It's the way things have always worked. Your RR connections will not be bogged down with AOL users - if changed at all, they will grow yet faster. AOL has one of the largers private networks in the world, and it is by NO means filled to capacity. AOL has peering agreements with nearly every ISP in the nation, from large to small, and that can only benefit RR users.
Score: 0
|Stronger companies do not encourage competition. A stronger company is a sugar-coated term for a bigger company, which requires a larger executive bureaucracy to maintain day-to-day business operations. This larger bureaucracy will also raise the cost of business, which will be passed on to the consumer in some way or another. In the near future all you AOLers might escape another rate increase but I wouldn't be surprised to find AOL "encouraging" it's subscribers to fill out one of those lovely surveys every month. They are going to have to make up the cost somewhere!
Also, this merger will probably end up enabling AOL to achieve a larger market share as they acquire additional capital. This will be a detriment to competition and thus innovation, another loss to the consumer.
Score: 0
|What good has AOL done? Where are the stronger products they should be delivering? Netscaep 5.0? vaporware. There's a pre-alpha floating around the net but that doesn't count. ICQ? No new features since I last used it. Droppe dit as soon as AOL bought the company. Winamp? nothing there yet. AOL IM? A slew of new fancy features including more wasted ad space. Hmmmm.....
Now to the issus of AOL not hogging bandwidth. Apparently you are clueless abouthow broadband access and networks work. The simple explanation is the highway metaphor. You got a nice 10 lane highway and you're cruising around with 20 or so other cars. Everyone's moving along fairly well, a few hang-ups but more or less smooth riding. Suddenly you see a mergeing ramp. 2000 cars enter the highway. Your 10 lane highway is now bumper to bumper traffic. AOL WILL do this to the broadband networks of RoadRunner. They have been so anxoius to get their hands on cable access Steve Case probably wet himself when this deal went through. AOL will waste so much bandwidth with their ads and forced downloads the 10 lane highway will be clogged with 20000 cars.
Screw AOL. I'm switching to RCN and getting a better deal. Hope RCN doesn't get bought by AOL.
Score: 0
|Well, Im just depresses knowing that RR is slow enough without those AOL newbies. And yes, I do mean that. Good by 700k/sec downloads, welcome the 10k/sec ones. You know how them AOLers like to download their "neat" stuff.
Im just waiting for my 2.5Gb/sec powerline connection...Any day now.
Score: 0
|i woke up monday morning, stubbed my toe, cut myself shaving, turned on the fish tank light, a 4' bulb blows up, my dns server is down accrost the atlantic for 12 hours, i thought, lets pull up betanews.com and figgured i could find some good news,.. i was dead wrong.
as a business solutions subscriber to tw/rr i find news of this nature highly disturbing. the thought of sharing any bandwith with a group of people who have trouble wipeing their a** without a keyword is revolting. i cannot degrade myself to use any service polluted with aol spam. and i would much rather c-4 the server then have any of their files on it. the end of this quarter will find some interesting alternatives.
tech / sysadmin us.blastnet.org
Score: 0
|Lets see how long it takes the DOJ to get a hold of this one. If It actually goes through, I'll be surprised, seeing how Time warner is the biggest multimedia company in the world, and AOL is reportedly the largest internet provider.
In a side note, I'd rather be without Internet than deal with Asanine On-Line
Score: 0
|Now we can say hello to:
faster growing cable broadband
a jumpstart on interactive television
the merging of the internet and television
This is very good for consumers, more so in the future than today.
Score: 0
|Well - this is it.
Say Good Bye to the Internet as we knew it.
Could somebody mention a company that is not yet owned by AOL?
It would make me feel much better....
On the serious side - the vision of monopoly really worries me.
Score: 0
|Betanews.com and eFront.com are wholly owned by eFront, Inc. Not AOL...there's one :)
Score: 0
|Microsoft, but hey may not for long the way the arte splitting up and I think mindspring is owned by time warner so is aol buying up more competition?
Score: 0
|yeah or maybe Micro-Disney...yeah, that would work... or Coke-a-AOL....yeah that's it...
Score: 0
|Mindspring is not owned by AOL, and it has recently merged with Earthlink (another independent)
Score: 0
|Mindspring and Earthlink merger will be complete in a month or 2 making the 2nd largest ISP (the biggest REAL isp) behind AOL...We will never be aquir4ed ay AOL.
-An Earthlink Employee
Score: 0
|Whoo-hoo! It's great to see that the two best ISP's (depending on who you ask, but it's always MindSpring or Earthlink) are teaming up to kick butt and take names.
Score: 0
|