Who is he fooling? The whole time Gerry Levin was chairman of Time Warner, and then AOL Time Warner, he kept complaining about how Warner Bros chairmen Bob Daly and Terry Semel were making more extravagant salary, bonuses, and other compensation than he was (thanks to their shrewd negotiating, their piece of Warner Bros licensing merchandise and retail stores, their division making wheelbarrows of cash, and their insistence on not going on Time Warner’s board (so their gargantuan pay package wouldn’t have to be disclosed in SEC filings). But listen to this clown who left Time Warner in shame for co-arranging that loser AOL deal. Suddenly he’s Robin Hood and telling Fox Business Network today:
“It’s time, I think, not only to put some principles back in executive pay, but also try and get CEOs to be a part of society. Let’s shop at Costco, let’s fly coach for a while and let’s not have a class society where the disparity between what a CEO makes and what the people in the company make is so large as to be almost unfair and unjust.”
And on whether he personally should give back the millions he made: “Obviously, I gave back my hundreds of millions because I never sold one share of stock, which is where most of the compensation was. My stock went down just as it did for every shareholder, which I think we should impose on CEOs.”
Oh, and in case you didn’t know, this Man Of The People now helps his wife Laurie Perlman run a Santa Monica “sanctuary” that charges a flat $175K a year for acupuncture and talk therapy.
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.






But someone has to be really stupid-not just well off-to believe $175,000 annually for accupuncture and therapy is worth the money.
Of course these people are hypocrites but so are the hosts of these assinine CNBC and FOX Business shows and con artist/manipulators/BS artists like Suze Orman.
Jim Wiatt=Gerald Levin
Maybe I’m not smart enough to understand, but did he just try to claim that he “gave back” millions because his stock went down?
What a jerk. He put together a deal that didn’t even have a kill clause. So when the dotcom began to fall apart he couldn’t get out of it.He cost all of the stock holders millions, crippled the corporation for the last eight years. Jerry is doing just fine the employees lost their stock options,it devastated their 401 Ks and many lost their jobs. What a chump. Hope he goes back to sleep so we don’t have to think about him again.
“Maybe I’m not smart enough to understand, but did he just try to claim that he “gave back” millions because his stock went down?”
S,
Yes, he DID claim or at least implied that he he is on a higer moral ground because he “gave back” millions because he didn’t sell stock (so he claims) and the price went in the toilet. He thinks everyone is dumb enough to buy that. It’s like he’s proud that the value of AOLTM went in the crapper, costing people their hard earned money either as stock holders or through mutual funds. What a great executive.
disgusting
Nice job caving to current political populism, Levin.
When he ran Time-Warner, Levin was ponderous, pretentious and clueless. It looks like nothing has changed. Bob Daly was a class act
When he ran Time-Warner, Levin was ponderous, pretentious and clueless. It looks like nothing has changed. Bob Daly was a class act.
So happy that nobody’s buying more of his bullshit. Agree with all of above. Disgusting and patently disengenuous. It’s so worse than that and we all know it. Has he ever said “I made a mistake. I’m sorry”? And talk about clueless. What about terminally repressed? Sociopathic? He was never the same after his son was murdered. And who can blame him. Horrible horrible. But, who’s the fraudster getting $175k to therapize and acunpunct him? He didn’t just destroy TimeWarner with all the horrible impact of being taken over by Case and crew; the implosion of that company poisoned everything around it. (And whether that was good or necessary or bad, history will decide.) But that moment symbolizes the beginning of the end of the internet bubble and also of the business model that created the broadcast/movie/publishing behemoths. And then him and her together? Oy. How much again? Oh yeah, but it’s only $500 a day. Still not a big deal for way too many people in this town and fortunately comfined to mostly on the Westside. They actually might really have a business…. Or maybe not. When last sighted, he was trailing her around the BEA as she promoted a book proposal (not even a freaking book).