Time Warner Agrees to Pay $510 Million to End Probes

[MaineDem]

Dec. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Time Warner Inc., the world's biggest media company, agreed to pay $510 million to resolve U.S. investigations into whether its America Online unit improperly booked advertising sales.

Time Warner will pay $210 million to end a U.S. Department of Justice investigation, Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Comey said today at a Washington press conference. New York-based Time Warner said it reached a tentative agreement to pay $300 million to resolve a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission probe.

Settling the investigations will free Time Warner Chief Executive Richard Parsons to focus on pursuing acquisitions and returning some of the company's $6.9 billion in cash to shareholders. The probes began after America Online Inc. in 2001 bought Time Warner for $124 billion in a transaction that has sliced $104 billion from the company's market value.

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=auFu2UzHdonw&refer=news_index

[Chicago Democrat]

1. AOL is doomed...

What a total bad investment and merger that was.

[Voltaire99]

3. Let's hope. What a crap service. (n/t)

[Gothmog]

2. An extremely dumb merger

Basically, Time Warner's shareholders got screwed in this merger.

[DeepModem Mom]

4. I believe this settlement is reward for CNN's media-whoring for Bush...

during the campaign. Election over -- Bush "elected" -- CNN's parent company TimeWarner back in business.