Ted Turner Selling Out
Ted Turner's stake in AOL Time Warner Inc. continues to dwindle as he sells shares and removes himself from the media company that has sapped much of his fortune.
The billionaire sold 50 million AOL Time Warner shares and donated 10 million more Monday, netting $784.2 million and slicing his share of the media giant to 45 million shares, or about 1 percent.
Turner sold his shares for $13.07 each, according to a person familiar with the sale price. That was 31 cents below their closing price Monday on the New York Stock Exchange.
He sold 50 million shares outright, and transferred another 10 million to a charitable trust, which then sold those shares, the company said. The Wall Street Journal reported that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. bought the shares.
In January, Turner announced that he would leave the company as vice chairman after its annual shareholders meeting on May 16. In a statement announcing the stock sale, AOL Time Warner said Turner had decided to remain on its board.
Turner founded Atlanta-based Cable News Network and Turner Broadcasting, which merged with Time Warner in 1996.
He has repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with the 2001 merger of America Online and Time Warner, although in its release the company said Turner "remains supportive of management" and would vote his shares in favor of company proposals.
Since AOL's merger with Time Warner in 2001, the company's shares have lost about 70 percent of their value, removing much of Turner's personal wealth, which was more than $7 billion in the late 1990s. The latest Forbes magazine ranking of the world's richest people listed the Georgia mogul's assets at $2 billion.
AOL has been buffeted by slumping business and regulatory problems.
The company and two of its former key executives are being investigated for alleged "aiding and abetting" of schemes by other companies to artificially inflate reported revenue, the Washington Post has reported.
AOL Time Warner has said it hopes to avoid criminal charges by cooperating with federal investigators.
The company has reported $190 million in accounting discrepancies and turned over thousands of documents to investigators. The company is being investigated by the SEC, the FBI and the U.S. attorney's office for the Eastern District of Virginia.