• Forbes, Monday, December 19, 2005 10:01 AM

Merrill Lynch's media analyst Jessica Reif Cohen says splitting up Time Warner is "unlikely to drive significant operational improvement" at any of its divisions, but she does say that buying back shares would help the company redeem itself somewhat in the eyes of its shareholders. AOL's future is "the single most important strategic question facing Time Warner today," the note says, and the analysis that follows is quite interesting given Friday's announcement that it will be Google, in fact, who expands its existing partnership with AOL, not Microsoft's MSN. Merrill Lynch actually chose MSN as the more suitable partner for AOL--because of MSN's "more wide-ranging" advertising offerings.

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