NEW YORK (AP) — Richard Parsons, one in all America’s most outstanding black executives who held senior positions at Time Warner and Citigroup, died Thursday. He was 76 years outdated.
Parsons, who died at his Manhattan residence, was identified with a number of myeloma in 2015 and cited “unexpected problems” from the illness for reducing again on work a number of years later.
Financial companies agency Lazard, the place Parsons was a long-time board member, confirmed his dying.
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David Zaslav, president and CEO of Time Warner’s successor, Warner Bros. Discovery, remembered Parsons as a “nice mentor and buddy” and a “powerful, sensible negotiator, at all times trying to create one thing the place either side win.”
“Everyone who had the prospect to work with him and get to know him noticed that uncommon mixture of nice management with integrity and kindness,” Zaslav stated, calling him “one of many biggest drawback solvers this business has ever seen.” .
Parsons’ buddy, Ronald Lauder, instructed the New York Times that the reason for dying was most cancers. Parsons resigned Dec. 3 from the board of administrators of Lazard and Lauder’s firm, Estée Lauder, citing well being causes. He was on the board of administrators of Estée Lauder for 25 years.
Parsons, a Brooklyn native who began faculty at 16, was named president of Citigroup in 2009, a month after leaving Time Warner Inc., the place he helped restore the corporate’s stature following its much-maligned acquisition by a part of the web supplier America Online Inc.
He returned Citigroup to revenue after the monetary turmoil of the subprime mortgage disaster, which rocked the economic system in 2007 and 2008.
Parsons was appointed to the CBS board of administrators in September 2018 however resigned a month later as a consequence of sickness.
Parsons stated in a press release on the time that he was already coping with a number of myeloma when he joined the board, however “unexpected problems created further new challenges.” He stated his docs suggested him to cut back his schedule to make sure restoration.
“Dick’s legendary profession embodies the most effective traditions of American enterprise management,” Lazard stated in a press release. The firm, the place Parsons served as a board member from 2012 till this month, praised his “unmistakable intelligence and irresistible heat.”
“Dick was greater than an iconic chief in Lazard’s historical past: he was a testomony to how knowledge, heat and unwavering judgment can form not solely firms, however individuals’s lives,” the corporate stated. “His legacy lives on within the numerous leaders he suggested, the establishments he revamped, and the doorways he opened for others.”
Parsons was often called a talented negotiator, diplomat and disaster supervisor.
Although he was with Time Warner throughout its difficulties with AOL, he earned respect for the corporate and rebuilt its relationship with Wall Street. He simplified Time Warner’s construction, decreased debt and bought Warner Music Group and a e-book publishing division.
He additionally fought off activist investor Carl Icahn’s problem to interrupt up the corporate in 2006 and helped Time Warner attain settlements with traders and regulators over AOL’s questionable accounting practices.
Parsons joined Time Warner as president in 1995, after serving as president and CEO of Dime Bancorp Inc., one of many largest thrift establishments within the United States.
In 2001, after AOL used its fortunes as the biggest Internet entry supplier within the United States to purchase Time Warner for $106 billion in inventory, Parsons grew to become co-chief working officer together with AOL government Robert Pittman. In that position, he was accountable for the corporate’s content material operations, together with movie studios and recorded music.
He grew to become CEO in 2002 with the retirement of Gerald Levin, one of many foremost architects of that merger. Parsons was named president of Time Warner the next yr, changing AOL founder Steve Case, who had additionally supported the mix.
The fledgling firm’s Internet division rapidly grew to become a legal responsibility for Time Warner. The promised synergies between conventional and new media have by no means materialized. AOL started seeing subscriber declines in 2002 as Americans changed dial-up connections with broadband from cable TV and cellphone firms.
Parsons stepped down as CEO in 2007 and as chairman in 2008. A yr later AOL cut up from Time Warner and commenced buying and selling as a separate firm, after years of struggling to reinvent itself as an organization centered on promoting and content material. Time Warner is now owned by AT&T Inc.
A board member of Citigroup and its predecessor, Citibank, since 1996, Parsons was named chairman in 2009 at a time of turmoil for the monetary establishment. Citigroup had suffered 5 consecutive quarters of losses and had acquired $45 billion in authorities help. Its board of administrators had been criticized for permitting the financial institution to take a position so closely within the dangerous actual property market.
Citigroup returned to revenue below Parsons, beginning in 2010, and wouldn’t publish quarterly losses once more till the fourth quarter of 2017. Parsons retired from that job in 2012.
In 2014, he took over as interim CEO of the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers till Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took over later that yr.
“Dick Parsons was a superb, transformative chief and a media business big who led with integrity and by no means backed down from a problem,” stated NBA Commissioner Adam Silver.
Parsons, a Republican, beforehand labored as a lawyer for Nelson Rockefeller, the previous Republican governor of New York, and in Gerald Ford’s White House. Those early durations gave him a basis in politics and negotiations. He additionally served as an financial advisor to President Barack Obama’s transition workforce.
Parsons, whose love of jazz led him to co-own a Harlem jazz membership, additionally served as president of the Apollo Theater and the Jazz Foundation of America. And he has held positions on the boards of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the American Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Parsons performed basketball on the University of Hawaii at Manoa and earned his legislation diploma from Albany Law School in 1971. He is survived by his spouse Laura and their household.
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This obituary was written primarily by the late Associated Press journalist Anick Jesdanun, who he died in 2020.
