The monetary companies firm Lazard, the place Parsons was a longtime board member, confirmed his loss of life.
Parsons’ buddy Ronald Lauder advised The New York Occasions that the reason for loss of life was most cancers.
Parsons stepped down Dec. 3 from the boards of Lazard and Lauder’s firm, Estee Lauder, citing well being causes. He had been on Estee Lauder’s board for 25 years.
“Dick was an American unique, a colossus bestriding the worlds of enterprise, media, tradition, philanthropy, and past,” Ronald Lauder stated in an announcement on behalf of the Lauder household. David Zaslav, the CEO of Time Warner successor Warner Bros. Discovery, hailed Parsons as a “nice mentor and buddy” and a “robust and good negotiator, all the time trying to create one thing the place each side win.” “All who bought an opportunity to work with him and know him noticed that uncommon mixture of nice management with integrity and kindness,” Zaslav stated, calling him “one of many nice drawback solvers this trade has ever seen.”
Parsons, a Brooklyn native who began school at 16, constructed a observe file of steering huge corporations by means of robust occasions.
He returned Citigroup to profitability after turmoil from the worldwide monetary disaster and helped restore Time Warner after its much-maligned acquisition by web supplier America On-line.
Parsons was named to the board of CBS in September 2018 however resigned a month later due to sickness.
Parsons stated in an announcement on the time that he was already coping with a number of myeloma when he joined the board, however “unanticipated issues have created extra new challenges.” He stated his medical doctors suggested him to chop again on his commitments to make sure restoration.
“Dick’s storied profession embodied the best traditions of American enterprise management,” Lazard stated in an announcement. The corporate, the place Parsons was a board member from 2012 till this month, praised his “unmistakable intelligence and his 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 might form not simply corporations, however individuals’s lives,” the corporate stated. “His legacy lives on within the numerous leaders he recommended, the establishments he renewed, and the doorways he opened for others.”
Parsons was generally known as a talented negotiator, a diplomat and a disaster supervisor.
Though he was with Time Warner by means of its difficulties with AOL, he earned respect for the corporate and rebuilt its relations with Wall Road. He streamlined Time Warner’s construction, pared debt and offered Warner Music Group and a e book publishing division.
He additionally fended off a problem from activist investor Carl Icahn in 2006 to interrupt up the corporate and helped Time Warner attain settlements with traders and regulators over questionable accounting practices at AOL.
Parsons joined Time Warner as president in 1995 after serving as chairman and chief govt of Dime Bancorp Inc., one of many largest U.S. thrift establishments.
In 2001, after AOL used its fortunes because the main supplier of Web entry within the U.S. to purchase Time Warner for $106 billion in inventory, Parsons turned co-chief working officer with AOL govt Robert Pittman. In that function, he was in control of the corporate’s content material companies, together with film studios and recorded music.
He turned CEO in 2002 with the retirement of Gerald Levin, one of many key architects of that merger. Parsons was named Time Warner chairman the next 12 months, changing AOL founder Steve Case, who had additionally championed the mix.
The newly shaped firm’s Web division rapidly turned a drag on Time Warner. The promised synergies between conventional and new media by no means materialized. AOL started seeing a discount in subscribers in 2002 as Individuals changed dial-up connections with broadband from cable TV and cellphone corporations.
Parsons stepped down as CEO in 2007 and as chairman in 2008. A 12 months later AOL cut up from Time Warner and started buying and selling as a separate firm, following years of struggles to reinvent itself as a enterprise 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 straight quarters of losses and acquired $45 billion in authorities assist. Its board had been criticized for permitting the financial institution to take a position so closely within the dangerous housing market.
Citigroup returned to revenue beneath Parsons, beginning in 2010, and wouldn’t have a quarterly loss once more till the fourth quarter of 2017. Parsons retired from that job in 2012.
In 2014 he stepped in as interim CEO of the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers till Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took over later that 12 months.
“Dick Parsons was a superb and transformational chief and an enormous of the media trade who led with integrity and by no means shied away from a problem,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver stated.
Parsons, a Republican, beforehand labored as a lawyer for Nelson Rockefeller, a former Republican governor of New York, and in Gerald Ford’s White Home. These early stints gave him grounding in politics and negotiations. He additionally was an financial adviser on President Barack Obama’s transition workforce.
Parsons, whose love of jazz led to co-owning a Harlem jazz membership, additionally served as Chairman of the Apollo Theater and the Jazz Basis of America. And he held positions on the boards of the Smithsonian Nationwide Museum of African American Historical past and Tradition, the American Museum of Pure Historical past and the Museum of Fashionable Artwork in New York Metropolis.
Parsons performed basketball on the College of Hawaii at Manoa and acquired his regulation diploma from Albany Legislation College in 1971. He’s survived by his spouse, Laura, and their household.
