2005年NPR美国国家公共电台三月-Time Warner to Pay $300 Million on Revenu

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Media giant Time Warner will pay a three-hundred-million-dollar penalty to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The civil penalty is to settle charges the company overstated revenues earned by its online division AOL. NPR's Jack¹ Spear reports.

The probe involving Time Warner covers a roughly two-year period and involves allegations the company engaged in a variety of accounting² shenanigans. Brian Bushee is an assistant professor of accounting at the Wharton School. He says at the center of the government's case is the charge that company then AOL Time Warner used fraud to make its renevues look better than they actually were.

What AOL would do would be to give, let's say, ten million dollars to another Internet provider like Homestore.com which was mentioned in the complaint. To buy a banner link on Homestore's website. So AOL's paying Homestore to advertise on their webside. Then Homestore will take that same ten million dollars and turn around and buy advertising³ in AOL's website. So in that sense, AOL is giving cash to Homestore, Homestore gives it right back to AOL, but AOL gets to book the revenue for it.

But the problem's that AOL Time Warner went beyond the advertising renevue. The SEC also charged the company with overstating its subscriber⁴ base . Bushee says the company did this to cover up the fact its stock price was on a downward slide.

One of the big things that was going on with Internet service providers at this point is there was a question who's gonna dominate the industry. So if you are showing healthy increases in subscriber bases, it's gonna be more likely that you are gonna emerge as the firm that dominates this industry and puts the other one out of business.

AOL had to acknowledge usually the next quarter its subscriptions⁵ were overstated. The SEC also charged the company with violating a previous cease-and-desist order and in a separate proceeding⁶ charged three of the company's executives with violating securities laws. Legal expert John Kofi says the settlement also includes a half a billion dollar earnings⁷ restatement with a possibility of more to come.

There is some possibility that there'll be further earnings restatements. To this point, Time Warner has already had earnings restatements of something like six hundred and ninety million dollars because of its problems with AOL.

But that is a drop in the bucket compared with nearly two hundred billion dollars in shareholder⁸ value that has been a waste at the giant company since the disastrous⁹ purchase of Time Warner by AOL, again Professor John Kofi.

I think this is the final chapter in what is probably the most disastrous merger¹⁰ in American financial history. And with this resolution today, Time Warner is finally paying an additional three-hundred-million to settle the various earnings management charges that were principly directed against AOL.

With today's settlement, Time Warner did not admit or deny any wrongdoing. In a brief statement, Chairman and CEO Dick Parsons said the company is pleased to have resolved the SEC's investigation¹¹. Jack Spear, NPR news, Washington.