The AOL Time Warner Disaster | The Deal of the Century | 2
Business Wars
Wondery
4.6 • 13.2K Ratings
🗓️ 30 July 2025
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When AOL and Time Warner find a way around their differences, the biggest merger in history is on. But when rivals attack and tech stocks meltdown, AOL finds it must meet Wall Street expectations or watch its mega-deal derail.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Wonderly Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of business wars, the AOL Time Warner disaster, early and ad-free, right now. |
| 0:08.3 | Join Wonderly Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. |
| 0:15.9 | The Wonderly. |
| 0:19.0 | New Year's Eve, the year 2000. |
| 0:23.8 | At his gated home in Vermont, Time Warner's CEO Jerry Levin sits alone watching CNN. |
| 0:29.9 | Eight days ago, merger talks between AOL and Time Warner stalled, but he's been unable to stop thinking about AOL ever since. |
| 0:39.0 | The talks broke down over how much stock in the merged company would go to AOL shareholders. |
| 0:44.5 | AOL CEO Steve Case demanded 60%. |
| 0:47.9 | Levin insisted it had to be 50%. |
| 0:51.2 | The disagreement proved to be a deal breaker. |
| 0:57.6 | Now, Levin's regretting his decision. |
| 1:04.7 | Merging with AOL could turn Time Warner from a 20th century media business into a 21st century one. |
| 1:11.0 | With AOL, it could challenge not just other media companies, but Microsoft and AT&T, too. |
| 1:14.9 | And he's about to throw that opportunity away. |
| 1:22.2 | One week later, Levin enters Kays' suburban home in McLean, Virginia. |
| 1:26.8 | The place is huge, but seems lacking in personality. Case leads him into the dining room. There they make |
| 1:31.4 | strained small talk over a meal brought to them by servants. Both men know there's not much |
| 1:36.9 | to talk about. Only one thing matters. Can they overcome the roadblock to the merger? |
| 1:44.3 | After the main course, they stopped dancing around the issue. |
| 1:48.6 | Steve, we both want to find a way through this. Let's keep trying. |
| 1:52.3 | We're not going down to 50%. Even if I wanted to, which I don't, I can't sell that to my stockholders. |
| 1:59.0 | I can't go to 60%. Your stock price is full of fluff. You know that. |
... |
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