Sorry folks, I blew billions

NEW YORK - The bar just got higher for chief executive mea culpas.

Jerry Levin, the former boss of Time Warner, whose acquisition of AOL at the peak of the dot.com euphoria was dubbed "the largest mid-life crisis in the history of American capitalism", launched into a 10-minute apology for that era-defining deal - which wiped out billions of dollars of shareholder value and led to thousands of job losses.

And he threw down the gauntlet to the latest generation of empire-building CEOs, whose overreaching ambitions contributed to the near-collapse of the financial system and economic pain across the world. Stand up, he told them. Stand up and take responsibility.

"I'm really very sorry about the pain and suffering and loss caused," Levin told CNBC television.

"I take responsibility. It wasn't the board. It wasn't my colleagues at Time Warner. It wasn't the bankers or the lawyers - and there were a lot of them ... I am not going to blame any predecessors or successors. I helped pick them and I have great respect for them," he said.

"I presided over the worst deal of the century, apparently, and it is time for those involved in companies to stand up and say, 'You know what, I am solely responsible for it, I was the CEO, I was in charge'."

The US$350 billion ($477 billion) combination of Time Warner and AOL was breathtaking, even at the time it was announced in 2000. AOL, or America Online, had shot to prominence by putting America online through dial-up internet subscriptions.

The merger bolted it on to a conglomerate whose brands ranged from Time magazine and CNN to Warner Brothers movies.

While the vision behind the deal - that the internet would change the way media content was created and delivered - has proved spot on, the company itself never managed to capitalise.

Time Warner bought AOL at a time when its valuation was hopelessly inflated, and internet users anyway quickly began deserting to rivals.

A shadow of its former self, AOL was finally separated out again last year.

Levin's apology breaks the mould of corporate mea culpas, which traditionally come as an attempt to save one's job or at least salvage one's reputation.

The 70-year-old voluntarily appeared on the business channel. These days he and his wife run Moonview Sanctuary, a rehabilitation clinic for drug and sex addicts in Santa Monica.

- INDEPENDENT