Carl Icahn wants to break-up Time Warner. His banking cronies are egging him on. It is a dumb idea. I have said it before, and will say it again. Maybe Wall Street should pay attention to Rupert Murdoch and ignore Carl ‘Clueless’ Icahn.
Look at Time Warner. They are very well run. If you split them apart, there’s no more than $1 or $2 in it for shareholders. And that’s without thinking about [capital gains] taxation. I don’t know what Icahn thinks he’s doing. Icahn has gone out on a limb. Even if he succeeds in getting it broken up—and that would be very sad—I don’t think he’d make money out of it.
4 comments so far
1:46 PM PT
His name is not “Carl ‘Clueless’ Ichan”. It’s “Carl ‘Clueless’ Icahn”.
1:52 PM PT
Joe, thanks for the copy-edit. problem with trying to do blogging on a phone. not such a good idea.
3:07 PM PT
Well first of all its not like Parson’s has much of a clue to begin with, I mean the guy is a MANAGER. PERIOD. EOS.
I like Carl’s plan for the obvious reasons:
1) a break won’t trigger taxes.
2) a breakup makes it easier to sell off the pieces.
Needless to say there are FAR more buyers at lower transaction values, than there are for the whole enchilada.
Just look at the cluster-@#$% that is AOL. The old-world content mentality of TW has nearly killed that asset.
Murdoch is no-doubt a smart cookie, but so is Sumner, and look what he just did!
6:31 PM PT
Forgive me for noting that Rupert is a wily fellow. If I were him, and I thought Time Warner was mismanaged by Parsons, I’d want it to stay that way for as long as possible, since I compete with it in manifold ways. Thus I might say that it was well managed and no change should occur.
I by no means accept that Icahn’s breakup proposal makes sense. However, I’m not so convinced that Time Warner couldn’t be better managed by anyone else, as Parsons recently said, in a statement I took as rather arrogant. Om–you and I both work there so we see from inside what a great company it is in many ways, but it is no paragon of digital-savvy and net-savvy management. Nor is Parsons very good at communicating any kind of macro vision for the future and why exactly it DOES make sense for all the company’s assets to be under one umbrella. I happen to believe they do work well together, btw. But you and I both know that in this incredibly fast-moving media and tech environment no company can do well without constantly examining its strategic position vis a vis the incredible changes the internet is bringing to all aspects of business and society. Our great company is not doing that as well as it should, and thus there is an opening for Icahn’s meddling.
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