Richard “Dick” Parsons, who helped Time Warner divorce from AOL after the disastrous $165 billion merger, has died at the age of 76. He was a longtime board member of Lazard, a financial advisory and asset management firm.
Parsons became CEO of AOL Time Warner in 2002, replacing Gerald Levin, who stepped down two years after the merger. He led Time Warner’s turnaround by dropping “AOL” from the corporation’s name and reducing its $30 billion debt to $16.8 billion by selling Warner Music and other assets. “The merger did not work out quite the way many of us expected,” Parsons said in 2004. “The internet bubble burst and we had to fix the leaks.”
Parsons was born on April 4, 1948, in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant section and grew up in South Ozone Park in Queens, New York. He attended the University of Hawaii, where he played basketball and later attended Albany Law School, graduating at the top of his class.
He developed ties to moderate Republican Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, who became vice president under Gerald Ford in 1974. Parsons became associate director of President Ford’s domestic policy council. After Ford’s defeat in the 1976 election, Parsons returned to New York and joined the law firm of Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler, where he befriended future New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Parsons served as CEO and later chairman of Time Warner, leading the company’s turnaround and reducing its debt. He also served as chairman of Citigroup and the Los Angeles Clippers after the NBA banned owner Donald Sterling for life due to racist remarks. Parsons also played a leading role in the Jazz Foundation of America, the Apollo Theater Foundation, and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
In his personal life, Parsons was a moderate Republican and a social liberal. He kept a low profile and did not seek to be labeled as the “Black guy” in Giuliani’s mayoral campaign. He was married to Laura Ann Bush and had three children.
