Richard Parsons is proven talking at Time Warner’s headquarters on June 15, 2009 in New York.
Mark Lennihan/AP
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Mark Lennihan/AP
NEW YORK — Richard Parsons, one in all company The us’s maximum outstanding Black executives who held best posts at Time Warner and Citigroup, died Thursday. He was once 76. Parsons, who died at his Big apple house, was once identified with more than one myeloma in 2015 and cited “unanticipated headaches” from the illness for chopping again on paintings a couple of years later. The monetary products and services corporate Lazard, the place Parsons was once an established board member, showed his dying. Parsons’ good friend Ronald Lauder advised The New York Instances that the reason for dying was once most cancers. Parsons stepped down Dec. 3 from the forums of Lazard and Lauder’s corporate, Estée Lauder, bringing up well being causes. He were on Estée Lauder’s board for 25 years.
“Dick was once an American authentic, a colossus bestriding the worlds of commercial, media, tradition, philanthropy, and past,” Ronald Lauder mentioned in a remark on behalf of the Lauder circle of relatives. David Zaslav, the CEO of Time Warner successor Warner Bros. Discovery, hailed Parsons as a “nice mentor and good friend” and a “difficult and sensible negotiator, at all times taking a look to create one thing the place either side win.” “All who were given an opportunity to paintings with him and know him noticed that atypical aggregate of significant management with integrity and kindness,” Zaslav mentioned, calling him “one of the most nice drawback solvers this trade has ever observed.” Parsons, a Brooklyn local who began faculty at 16, constructed a monitor document of guidance large corporations thru difficult instances. He returned Citigroup to profitability after turmoil from the worldwide monetary disaster and helped repair Time Warner after its much-maligned acquisition by way of web supplier The us On-line.
Parsons was once named to the board of CBS in September 2018 however resigned a month later as a result of sickness. Parsons mentioned in a remark on the time that he was once already coping with more than one myeloma when he joined the board, however “unanticipated headaches have created further new demanding situations.” He mentioned his medical doctors urged him to scale back on his commitments to verify restoration. “Dick’s storied occupation embodied the best traditions of American industry management,” Lazard mentioned in a remark. The corporate, the place Parsons was once a board member from 2012 till this month, praised his “unmistakable intelligence and his impossible to resist heat.”
“Dick was once greater than an iconic chief in Lazard’s historical past — he was once a testomony to how knowledge, heat, and unwavering judgment may just form no longer simply corporations, however folks’s lives,” the corporate mentioned. “His legacy lives on within the numerous leaders he recommended, the establishments he renewed, and the doorways he opened for others.” Parsons was once referred to as a talented negotiator, a diplomat and a disaster supervisor. Despite the fact that he was once with Time Warner thru its difficulties with AOL, he earned appreciate for the corporate and rebuilt its family members with Wall Boulevard. He streamlined Time Warner’s construction, pared debt and bought Warner Tune Crew and a e book publishing department. He additionally fended off a problem from activist investor Carl Icahn in 2006 to get a divorce the corporate and helped Time Warner succeed in settlements with buyers and regulators over questionable accounting practices at AOL. Parsons joined Time Warner as president in 1995 after serving as chairman and leader govt of Dime Bancorp Inc., one of the most greatest U.S. thrift establishments. In 2001, after AOL used its fortunes because the main supplier of Web get right of entry to within the U.S. to shop for Time Warner for $106 billion in inventory, Parsons turned into co-chief working officer with AOL govt Robert Pittman. In that function, he was once accountable for the corporate’s content material companies, together with film studios and recorded track. He turned into CEO in 2002 with the retirement of Gerald Levin, one of the most key architects of that merger. Parsons was once named Time Warner chairman the next 12 months, changing AOL founder Steve Case, who had additionally championed the mix. The newly shaped corporate’s Web department temporarily turned into a drag on Time Warner. The promised synergies between conventional and new media by no means materialized. AOL started seeing a discount in subscribers in 2002 as American citizens changed dial-up connections with broadband from cable TV and call corporations.
Parsons stepped down as CEO in 2007 and as chairman in 2008. A 12 months later AOL break up from Time Warner and started buying and selling as a separate corporate, following years of struggles to reinvent itself as a industry occupied with promoting and content material. Time Warner is now owned by way of AT&T Inc. A board member of Citigroup and its predecessor, Citibank, since 1996, Parsons was once named chairman in 2009 at a time of turmoil for the monetary establishment. Citigroup had suffered 5 immediately quarters of losses and won $45 billion in executive help. Its board were criticized for permitting the financial institution to speculate so closely within the dangerous housing marketplace. Citigroup returned to benefit below Parsons, beginning in 2010, and do not have a quarterly loss once more till the fourth quarter of 2017. Parsons retired from that task in 2012. In 2014 he stepped in as intervening time CEO of the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers till Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took over later that 12 months. “Dick Parsons was once an excellent and transformational chief and a large of the media trade who led with integrity and not shied clear of a problem,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver mentioned. Parsons, a Republican, in the past labored as a attorney for Nelson Rockefeller, a former Republican governor of New York, and in Gerald Ford’s White Area. The ones early stints gave him grounding in politics and negotiations. He additionally was once an financial adviser on President Barack Obama’s transition group. Parsons, whose love of jazz ended in co-owning a Harlem jazz membership, additionally served as Chairman of the Apollo Theater and the Jazz Basis of The us. And he held positions at the forums of the Smithsonian Nationwide Museum of African American Historical past and Tradition, the American Museum of Herbal Historical past and the Museum of Trendy Artwork in New York Town. Parsons performed basketball on the College of Hawaii at Manoa and won his legislation level from Albany Legislation Faculty in 1971. He’s survived by way of his spouse, Laura, and their circle of relatives.
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