Wall Street's 'M&A Follies': Why the Curtain Never Ever Falls

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:



Wall Street's 'M&A Follies':
Why the Curtain Never Falls
AOL and Time Warner split, Comcast and NBC join. The merger merry-go-round continues to spin. Investment bankers and corporate execs get the brass ring. The rest of us get pink slips and higher prices.

December 14, 2009
By Sam Pizzigati


What may be the dumbest corporate merger of all time — the $165 billion deal that saw AOL gobble up Time Warner — has finally ended. AOL last week formally spun off and became a totally separate and independent corporate entity.

The AOL-Time Warner merger, initially brokered back in 2000, had been a disaster for years, by every standard measure of enterprise success. Indeed, the merger had essentially become a joke, a move so excruciatingly wrong-headed that observers from outside could only laugh at the sheer folly behind it.

The yucks started breaking out when execs at the newly merged media giant forced Time Warner-side staff to use AOL's email system. That email, designed for consumers, bombed totally as a workplace tool. Large attachments crashed the system. Messages vanished. Amazingly, that fun went on for a year.

But the merger would be no joking matter for the thousands of workers who lost their jobs as execs of the new AOL Time Warner rushed after the “synergy” they claimed their merger would surely create.

Actually, the merger may have been more theft than joke. The AOL and Time Warner execs who cut the merger deal ended up laughing all the way to the bank. Time Warner’s numero uno cashed out $153 million in stock option profits in the merger’s first year. AOL’s top gun collected $100 million in the second. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.toomuchonline.org/articlenew_2009/dec14a.html

[Mopar151]

1. Been through this first-hand

At ground level, much of what goes on makes as much sense as the Mad Hatter. I got the shaft in 2001, and some of the other "allumni" told me I was lucky to get out then....
And if you think that e-mail and management software issues are bad, see how much IT support you get for networked CNC machines.