Richard D. Parsons, whose humane technique to trade made him a serial troubleshooter at distressed corporations akin to Time Warner, CBS and Citigroup and a sought-after adviser on the absolute best echelons of American trade, died on Thursday at his Ny house. He used to be 76.The motive used to be bone most cancers, stated Ronald S. Lauder, a member of the Estée Lauder board and considered one of Mr. Parsons’s oldest pals.Mr. Parsons’s winding profession tracked the most important corporations in American media and finance — and the most important issues. Over and over again, he stepped in when issues regarded catastrophic and put his easy management taste to paintings, disentangling Gordian knots and alleviating discontented shareholders.Mr. Parsons, a jazz-loving oenophile who served at the board of the Apollo Theater and owned a Tuscan vineyard, rose to the highest of the trade global in an generation when he used to be steadily the one Black government within the boardroom. A self-described “Rockefeller Republican,” Mr. Parsons spoke out on social justice problems within the wake of George Floyd’s homicide in 2020, signed a letter protesting a 2021 regulation that imposed restrictions on Georgia citizens and co-founded the Fairness Alliance, a fund that backs early-stage ventures led by means of ladies and other people of colour.Mr. Parsons’s long résumé is a catalog of company emergencies: He stanched losses at Dime Bancorp all through the savings-and-loan disaster within the Eighties; wiped clean up the disastrous merger of AOL and Time Warner after the dot-com bust on the flip of the century; stepped in at Citigroup because the banking colossus teetered after the 2007-8 monetary disaster; served as CBS’s board chairman after its disgraced leader government, Leslie Moonves, went to battle with its controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone; and got here out of semiretirement to stable the Los Angeles Clippers after their proprietor on the time, Donald Sterling, made racist remarks.All through all of it, Mr. Parsons deployed his simple method and in depth Rolodex — he used to be an aide to Nelson A. Rockefeller, the previous New York governor and vice chairman — to steer, attraction and cajole his means out of tight company corners. In 2007, as Time Warner used to be crawling again from the edge of crisis, Mr. Parsons summed up his profession all through a steakhouse interview with The New York Instances sooner than ordering a 2d bottle of wine.“I would like my legacy to be easy: I left where in just right form and in just right arms,” he stated.Survivors come with Mr. Parsons’s spouse, Laura, with whom he raised 3 kids.This can be a growing tale. Take a look at again for a complete obituary.
