NEAL TRAVIS Looked before he leapt
EVEN as Bob Pittman cleans out his desk at AOL Time Warner, a potential shareholder storm is brewing over his golden parachute. Pittman has a severance check of something more than $60 million coming to him - and it couldn't happen at a worse time for the embattled media giant.
It doesn't matter that the compensation was settled on ages ago: stockholders who have seen their investment in the company melt away are going to revolt at seeing any more of their capital thrown away on payouts to failed executives.
Gerald Levin, architect of the ill-fated merger between AOL and Time Warner, walked off with something in excess of $200 million earlier this year. That rankled with shareholders and things have only got worse since then. Pittman's payout is only going to reinforce the view of investors across the board that corporate leaders have been emptying the till in the midst of company collapses.
Richard Parsons, who almost accidentally has become CEO of the media conglomerate, couldn't have known what he was getting into. I expect his deputy chairman Ted Turner, still a major shareholder, to stage one of his famous explosions at any moment. It's not Pittman's fault, I guess. He signed his deal when those golden parachutes were familiar sights over head. But that was then, this is now, and I think there's going to be hell to pay.