|
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Neophytes Rush in Where Angels Fear to Tread, 2 Jun 2004
Although I have read a lot about the AOL-Time Warner merger and its aftermath, the national financial press did not do full justice to the story. Stealing Time does, however, and I highly recommend the book to you.Alec Klein has a particularly good vantage point, having covered AOL for two years for The Washington Post. In the course of that assignment, he discovered that AOL was using sleazy advertising sales practices and illegal accounting to "achieve" its earnings growth. Primary motives for these despicable practices were power hunger, greed and a desire to pump AOL stock while the merger was pending (it was an all-stock deal). When the book focuses on those parts of the story, Stealing Time is riveting reading. The bulk of the book covers what Time Warner was thinking (apparently not very much) as the merger developed and was pursued through the regulators . . . and the very ugly aftermath while AOL collapsed and the absurdity of the "synergy" concepts were exposed as bankrupt. The book is enlivened by many anecdote-rich episodes (such as Jeff Bewkes calling Steve Case out in an executive meeting) and detailed interviews with those involved. You will also get many insights into why so many dot-coms failed. AOL was stripping those who needed its advertising of as much cash flow as possible through indefensible negotiating tactics. The advertising sales practices described here rank with the accounting at Enron as the sleaziest business actions taken by a major company that I have read about. It's enough to make you want to cancel your AOL subscription! . . . if you still have one. If I liked the book so much, why didn't I rate it at five stars? Well, I think the book should have focused more on AOL and less on the aftermath at Time Warner. The inevitable shuffling of the deck chairs among the soon-to-be-fired or -retired executives isn't all that interesting. Sure, Time Warner was abused by AOL. But watching all of the ugliness of the abuse didn't make the story any better. As I finished the book, I realized that any time that a "big picture" CEO is looking for partners . . . that's a recipe for disaster. Avoid those stocks!
|
(1)
£6.75
(9)
£6.74
