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The Worst Tech Mergers and Acquisitions of Recent Times
By siliconindia
AOL and Time Warner
The $360 billion merger, announced in January 2000, is one of the most significant corporate failures of the 20th century. Time Warner's video, music and print, and its cable company would have rallied around AOL as the solution (making AOL synonymous with a national broadband network.)
Within months, the dot-com bubble left investors with billions in losses. Time Warner took up a dial-service just when Web surfers were switching to high-speed in masses. The companies found that it was more important to build a great platform which everyone would enjoy using--than to own--the content that would be distributed over it.
The value of AOL has dropped significantly from its $360 high. Its subscriber base has seen no significant growth since 2002. In September 2008, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes announced that Time Warner would split AOL's internet access and advertising businesses into two, with the possibility of later selling the internet access division.
The reason for the failure is the fact that AOL and Time Warner were not able to encourage a climate within the companies to initiate the synergies that were proposed. A clear and concise strategy never emerged from the two companies. The two companies always seemed out of sync, witnessing massive job losses, dramatic departures of the executives and plummeting prices of the stocks.
In 2009, Time Warner finally set-off AOL, as an independent company. Today the combined values of the companies is about one-seventh of their worth in 2000. The merger destroyed more investor value than any single merger in the history.
