Richard Parsons, who helped Time Warner divorce from AOL after what was thought of one of many worst takeovers in historical past, has died. He was 76.
His dying was confirmed by Lazard, the place he was a longtime board member.
Parsons turned CEO of AOL Time Warner in 2002, changing Gerald Levin, who stepped apart two years after the media big’s disastrous $165 billion merger with the upstart web firm.
As CEO and later chairman, he led Time Warner’s turnaround, dropping “AOL” from the company’s identify and shrinking the corporate’s $30 billion in debt to $16.8 billion by promoting Warner Music and different properties.
“The merger didn’t work out fairly the best way many people anticipated. The web bubble burst and we needed to repair the leaks,” Parsons advised The Independent in 2004. “It was not as monumental a process as many individuals thought, as the elemental companies of the previous Time Warner — like publishing, the cable networks and flicks — was operating effectively.”
He stated that after the merger, AOL’s enterprise had collapsed and Warner Music Group was declining, together with all the music trade. “So we offered our music enterprise, in addition to different nonstrategic belongings, to strengthen our stability sheet and put in new administration.”
Parsons stepped down from Time Warner in 2007.
The Rockefeller connection
Richard Dean “Dick” Parsons was born right into a working-class household on April 4, 1948, in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant part and grew up in South Ozone Park in Queens, New York. He was a center little one amongst 5 siblings.
He attended public college, skipping two grades, and at age 16, the 6-foot-4 Parsons enrolled on the University of Hawaii, the place he performed basketball and met his future spouse, Laura Ann Bush, whom he married in 1968.
After commencement, he returned to New York state to attend Albany Law School, moonlighting as a part-time janitor to assist pay his tuition and ending on the high of his class. During an internship on the New York state legislature, he developed ties to reasonable Republican Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, who turned vp below Gerald Ford in 1974 within the wake of President Richard Nixon’s resignation. Parsons turned affiliate director of President Ford’s home coverage council.
“The old-boy community lives,” Parsons advised The New York Times in a 1994 interview. “I didn’t develop up with any of the previous boys. I didn’t go to highschool with any of the previous boys. But by turning into part of that Rockefeller entourage, that created for me a bunch of people that’ve appeared out for me ever since.”
After Ford’s defeat by Jimmy Carter within the 1976 election, Parsons returned to New York and joined the legislation agency of Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler in 1977, as did his pal Rudy Giuliani. Parsons and his spouse and three kids moved to Rockefeller nation, Briarcliff Manor in Westchester County. Coincidentally, his maternal grandfather had been a groundskeeper on John D. Rockefeller’s close by property, Kykuit.
Parson’s shoppers included Rockefeller’s widow, Happy, and the Dime Savings Bank of New York. In 1988, he accepted a suggestion to go Dime Bancorp, which had been struggling by the financial savings & mortgage disaster after aggressively approving high-risk mortgages as housing costs crashed. In 1989, it posted a $92.3 million loss. By the tip of 1993, after ordering huge layoffs, Parsons helped the financial institution full a $300 million recapitalization. In 1995, he helped engineer Dime’s merger with Anchor Savings, creating one of many nation’s largest thrift establishments.
Parsons joined the Time Warner board on the advice of Rockefeller’s brother Laurance. He turned president of Time Warner in 1995.
As a Rockefeller Republican, Parsons thought of himself a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. Parsons labored for Giuliani’s marketing campaign for New York mayor however stored a behind-the-scenes profile. ″I didn’t wish to be positioned because the Mayor’s Black man,″ he advised the Times a couple of years later.
Giuliani put him in control of the mayoral transition staff in 1993 however Parsons turned down an offer to grow to be deputy mayor for fiscal affairs. His relationship with Giuliani later soured after the mayor tried to strain Time Warner Cable to hold the then-fledgling Fox News Channel in New York.
Two years after stepping down from Time Warner, Parsons turned chairman of Citigroup in 2009, serving to to stabilize the banking big within the wake of the monetary disaster. In May 2014, he was named interim CEO of the Los Angeles Clippers after the NBA banned proprietor Donald Sterling for all times as a result of he had made racist remarks.
“Like most Americans, I’ve been deeply troubled by the ache the Clippers’ staff, followers and companions have endured,” Parsons stated.
Parsons performed down race as an element of his success.
“For lots of people, race is a defining concern. It simply isn’t for me,” he advised the Times in 1997. “It is … like air. It’s like peak. I’ve different issues that I’m centered on.″
He later got here out of retirement to briefly function CBS chairman within the wake of Les Moonves’ ouster following sexual harassment and assault allegations in the course of the #MeToo motion.
After solely a month as CBS’ interim chairman, Parsons stepped down instantly in October 2018, citing well being considerations.
“When I agreed to hitch the board and function the interim chair, I used to be already coping with a critical well being problem — a number of myeloma — however I felt that the scenario was manageable,” Parsons stated in a CBS assertion asserting he had been changed by Strauss Zelnick. “Unfortunately, unanticipated issues have created extra new challenges, and my docs have suggested that slicing again on my present commitments is crucial to my total restoration.”
Parsons was energetic in lots of charities, together with taking part in main roles for the Jazz Foundation of America, the Apollo Theater Foundation and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. During his years on the Apollo Theater board, he helped the historic Harlem entertainment venue increase practically $100 million. Parsons and his spouse additionally donated 40 artworks to the American Folk Art Museum in July 2021 to assist have a good time its sixtieth anniversary.
