Time Warner and should have left it alone. That was a gem of an asset that could have had significant growth but the SBC blockheads had to get their grubby paws into it and dirty up the punch bowl. You think about all the M&A over the years and what they botched, divested, ruined etc...The hubris for an SBC Telco Executive team to think they could do better than the entertainment talent of Time Warner. With AT&T Executives I see little to no connection with the masses of customers or the overwhelming majority of the employee base. I left 2+ years ago and it was the best decision I ever made. Those hanging around based on some mythical package they think they will get.....times have changed and those days are over.
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@dv Yup that’s what I remembered reading. He really was clued in on how entertainment execs operate, God he is such a schmuck.
To fully fathom what a raging and narcissistic clueless a-hole they must have immediately realized they were now working for, you MUST read the detail re: Stank’s “operating cadence” memo to his new TW execs….its is painful. They must have all rejoiced when he failed in such record time LOL…https://www.asimplemodel.com/bips/bip-feed/onboarding-gone-wrong-with-100-bn-at-stake
@dh Stank even said publicly that he does not know anything about running a media company, and then he proceeded to force his decisions down everyone's throat when he was el presidente. Every decision he made has been overturned since he left TW alone. What a huge mistake Stank has been at every opportunity. He must have pictures.
@d7 I read an article - I think it was an extract from a book about the merger - that detailed some of the initial meetings between the Warner people and Stankey and co. It was not pretty. Showed just how clueless he was in dealing with them. And I remember at the end he said something like he doesn’t really look back on things like this or reflect on them. Par for the course.
Why do you stay? Are you comfortable going nowhere in life?
Your analysis is incorrect. A company like Warner is only valuable because it has one-of-a-kind creative talent. The first thing most of that talent did after meeting the mouth breathers on AT&T's leadership team is simply leave. The longer AT&T held the company, the more value it lost. Once AT&T spun it off, the talent began to come back, increasing the value again. Our leadership team is so obviously incompetent and personally repellant that production execs and financiers under the Warner umbrella sized them up instantly and just walked. It was a bad deal from the start, but Stankey and Sonny-in-Law made it a fiasco by exposing who was running the show to much smarter people who correctly saw the disaster coming.
yawn thank you genius now get a life.