Richard Parsons, former CEO of Time Warner, dies at age 76

Richard Parsons, who helped Time Warner divorce AOL after what was considered one of the worst acquisitions in history, has died. He was 76 years old.

His death was confirmed by Lazard, where he was a long-time board member.

Parsons became CEO of AOL Time Warner in 2002, replacing Gerald Levin, who left two years after the media giant’s disastrous $165 billion merger with the fledgling Internet company.

As CEO and later chairman, he led the turnaround of Time Warner, dropping “AOL” from the corporate name and reducing the company’s $30 billion debt to $16.8 billion by selling Warner Music and other properties.

“The merger didn’t work out the way many of us expected. The Internet bubble burst and we had to fix the leaks,” Parsons told The Independent in 2004. “It wasn’t as monumental a task as many people thought. Time Warner’s core businesses— “The old stuff — like publishing, cable networks and movies — worked fine.”

He said that after the merger, AOL’s business had collapsed and Warner Music Group was in decline, along with the entire music industry. “So we sold our music business, as well as other non-strategic assets, to strengthen our balance sheet and install new management.”

Parsons left Time Warner in 2007.

Richard Dean “Dick” Parsons was born into a working-class family on April 4, 1948, in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn and grew up in South Ozone Park in Queens, New York. He was a middle child among five siblings.

He attended public school, skipping two grades, and at age 16, the 6-foot-4 Parsons enrolled at the University of Hawaii, where he played basketball and met his future wife, Laura Ann Bush, whom he married. in 1968.

After graduation, he returned to New York State to attend Albany Law School, working as a part-time janitor to help pay for his tuition and finishing at the top of his class. During an internship in the New York State Legislature, he developed ties to moderate Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who became vice president under Gerald Ford in 1974, following the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Parsons became associate director of President Ford’s domestic policy council.

“The old boys network lives on,” Parsons told The New York Times in a 1994 interview. “I didn’t grow up with any of the old boys. I didn’t go to school with any of the old boys. But becoming part of that Rockefeller entourage, that created for me a group of people who have looked out for me ever since.”

After Ford lost to Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election, Parsons returned to New York and joined the law firm of Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler in 1977, as did his friend Rudy Giuliani. Parsons and his wife and three children moved to the Rockefeller estate, Briarcliff Manor in Westchester County. Coincidentally, his maternal grandfather had been caretaker at John D. Rockefeller’s nearby estate, Kykuit.

Parson’s clients included Rockefeller’s widow, Happy, and the Dime Savings Bank of New York. In 1988, he accepted an offer to run Dime Bancorp, which was facing the savings and loan crisis after aggressively approving high-risk mortgages as housing prices plummeted. In 1989, it posted a loss of $92.3 million. In late 1993, after ordering massive layoffs, Parsons helped the bank complete a $300 million recapitalization. In 1995, he helped merge Dime Engineer with Anchor Savings, creating one of the nation’s largest savings institutions.

Parsons joined the Time Warner board on the recommendation of Rockefeller’s brother, Laurance. He became president of Time Warner in 1995.

As a Rockefeller Republican, Parsons considered himself a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. Parsons worked on Giuliani’s campaign for mayor of New York, but kept a behind-the-scenes profile. “I didn’t want to be positioned as the Mayor’s black guy,” he told the Times a few years later.

Giuliani put him in charge of the mayor’s transition team in 1993, but Parsons turned down an offer to become deputy mayor for fiscal affairs. His relationship with Giuliani later soured after the mayor tried to pressure Time Warner Cable to keep the then-fledgling Fox News Channel in New York.

Two years after leaving Time Warner, Parsons became chairman of Citigroup in 2009, helping to stabilize the banking giant in the wake of the financial crisis. In May 2014, he was named interim CEO of the Los Angeles Clippers after the NBA permanently suspended owner Donald Sterling for making racist comments.

“Like most Americans, I have been deeply troubled by the pain the Clippers team, fans and partners have endured,” Parsons said.

Parsons dismissed race as a factor in his success.

“For a lot of people, race is a defining issue. It’s just not for me,” he told the Times in 1997. “It’s like the air. It’s like the height. I have other things I’m focused on.”

He later came out of retirement to serve briefly as CBS chairman following the ouster of Les Moonves following allegations of sexual harassment and assault during the #MeToo movement.

After just one month as interim chairman of CBS, Parsons abruptly resigned in October 2018, citing health concerns.

“When I agreed to join the board and serve as interim chairman, I was already dealing with a serious health challenge — multiple myeloma — but I felt the situation was manageable,” Parsons said in a CBS statement announcing that he. had been replaced by Strauss Zelnick. “Unfortunately, unforeseen complications have created new additional challenges and my doctors have advised that reducing my current commitments is essential to my overall recovery.”

Parsons was active in many charities, including playing lead 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 board of the Apollo Theater, he helped the historic Harlem entertainment venue raise nearly $100 million. Parsons and his wife also donated 40 works of art to the Museum of American Folk Art in July 2021 to help celebrate his 60th birthday.