Examples of Mergers or Acquisitions

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1. TimeWarner Merger (http://www.timewarner.com).

Visit the TimeWarner Website (http://www.timewarner.com). It was referred to as "the deal of the century" because it was the first global Internet and communications company of the Internet century, as well as the largest Internet service provider. The agreed deal, the world's largest ever takeover worth $160bn in shares, brought waves of analyst euphoria and predictable hype. Steve Case, chief executive officer of AOL and the deal initiator, described the deal as defining. It created, he said, "The first global Internet and communications company of the Internet century." Perhaps it's the deal of the millennium. (vnunet.com).

"Welcome to convergence. It is enormous. Yesterday the world's largest Internet service provider, AOL (revenue, $4.7 billion; market value, $163 billion), bought film studios to cable TV media giant Time Warner (revenue, $26.8 billion but market value only $97 billion)." (vnunet.com).

Why? Two essential reasons have been put forth for the merger; mainly pointing to the reason being that of Time Warner's CEO's passion for technology and/or Time Warners fear of a hostile takeover by AOL - Time Warner was eager to merger with AOL mainly because of its former AOL Time Warner CEO Gerald Levin's passion for the Internet, based on his "messianic belief in technology, in transformational events, in the next big deal." However, Liberty Media's John Malone and others have another theory that deserves at least some attention. Levin might have been afraid that AOL would use its inflated stock for a hostile takeover of Time Warner.

Consider: In 1999, AOL was battling cable companies to open their lines for Internet providers to offer high-speed connections. AOL ...