Time Warner media group to be quartered

The world's largest media group is to be split into four separate stock corporations, as proposed on Tuesday by Lazard, the investment bank commissioned by major shareholder Carl Icahn. The report presented accused Time Warner of a bloated cost structure and numerous business mistakes in recent years. As part of the split-up, a new Time Warner is to receive the cable and TV networks as well as the film division. The online division AOL, the publishing division and Time Warner Cable, the second-largest cable TV operator in the USA, are each to be transferred to an independent company. According to Icahn, the individual parts of Time Warner would be worth more in total than the current giant group. Icahn and the investor group expect to be able to increase the value of the individual parts by around 40 percent in total. Time Warner has already divested its book division: it was sold to the French group Lagardère for 450 million dollars.