AOL Merger Preceded Historic Loss

At the height of the dot-com boom in January 2000, AOL announced a $180 billion merger with Time Warner, the media conglomerate that owned Warner Bros. By the time the deal closed in January 2001, technology stocks had collapsed, AOL's dial-up business was losing ground to broadband, and the companies' promised synergies failed to materialize. In January 2003, AOL Time Warner reported a $98.7 billion net loss for 2002, then the largest annual corporate loss ever recorded. Time Warner removed AOL from its name later that year and spun off the internet company in 2009, leaving the deal widely regarded as one of history's worst mergers.

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