Leave to Wirt to obfuscate the readers (must be a defect that comes from
reading the New Yuck Time).  I would suggest he and you take a quick look at
some news stories about this AOL Time Warner loss.  I take here from one at
random:

http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,52090,00.html

The headline reads:  AOL Has Huge Loss; Shares Rise.

Reading the story explains the dichotomy.

<snip>
Sound too strange to be true? Blame it less on bean-counting wizardry at AOL
Time Warner (AOL) than on an accounting rule change that took effect this
year. The change, enacted by the U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board,
requires companies to recognize the amount they overpaid for acquisitions in
a lump sum, rather than expensing it over time.
For AOL Time Warner, which agreed to acquire the assets of the Time Warner
media empire at the peak of the bull market in 2000, the rule change
resulted in heavy red ink.
For the first three months of the year, AOL posted a jaw-dropping net loss
of $54 billion. The figure, the company said, "primarily reflects the
decline in the company's stock price" since the Time Warner acquisition was
announced in early 2000.
Because the loss was a non-cash charge, and also because investors were
expecting it, the reaction on Wall Street was fairly blase.
Shares of AOL Time Warner actually rose in after-hours trading Wednesday, as
investors largely ignored the charge. They focused instead on the
slightly-better-than-expected quarterly performance of the company, whose
stock has taken a beating for most of the year.
Overall, the company reported sharply higher returns compared to a year ago
in its cable, film, and Internet access businesses. Those gains were offset
partially by lower Internet ad sales. Revenue for the quarter in all
divisions totaled $9.8 billion, slightly ahead of the $9.5 billion consensus
estimate among analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial/First Call.
<snip>

Need we say more.

Denys

-----Original Message-----
From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of
Wirt Atmar
Sent: Thursday, May 02, 2002 11:15 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: SKC Morphs Again... We're Now SKHPC

david.gudewicz writes:

> If we learn nothing from history, we are doomed to repeat it.  Or
something
>  like that.
>
>  Can anyone here enlighten us with a merger such as this that DID work?
And
>  to reiterate the obvious, the Compaq assimilation of DEC did NOT work.

Although this is another of those messages that the original author won't
see
because of the multiple-newsgroup gated postings to HP3000-L, nonetheless it
may be of some value to mention that the AOL-Time Warner merger, the largest
in history, also posted the largest loss in American financial history two
weeks ago: $54 billion dollars, a loss twice the size of the HP-Compaq
merger's value.

Wirt Atmar

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