Gerald Levin, the media executive involved in the unsuccessful Time Warner and AOL merger in the early 2000s, passed away this week.
Levin, at 84, had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and was residing in California, The New York Times reported.
During a period of high cable viewership, Levin and the then-head of AOL Steve Case orchestrated one of the largest business acquisitions in American history.
Following the creation of AOL Time Warner, the company’s stock price dropped over 30 percent, and it experienced almost a $100 billion loss in 2002, a record at the time, as reported by the Times.
The company’s downfall is widely regarded as one of the major casualties of the dot-com bubble burst at the start of the century.
“While it’s fair to criticize Jerry, it wasn’t solely Jerry’s fault. Some of the facts about the appeal of AOL were greatly exaggerated,” said Fay Vincent, a former commissioner of Major League Baseball who sat on the boards of both companies, to the newspaper. “It turns out we made the wrong choice.”
