Former AOL Time Warner Chairman Steve Case knew as early as 2000 about transactions that allowed the Web giant to overstate its revenues ahead of its merger with Time Warner, according to Reuters.
Court documents made available Friday show that AOL Board Member Miles Gilburne was "under extreme pressure to help the company make its financial targets" while it tried to close its purchase of Time
Warner. The documents apparently illustrate just how much top executives at AOL knew about over-zealous accounting practices prior to the largest merger in corporate history. Reuters received the
information in a series of e-mails from five California pension funds that are suing Time Warner, AOL, Case, and others, alleging losses of up to $1 billion due to AOL's financial misrepresentations.
AOL's strong revenue growth helped boost its share price, which it used as currency to buy Time Warner. Among other things, Case said: "Please let me know if you think deals are being done to make the
numbers that might be strategically unsound," in an e-mail to CFO Michael Kelly on December 8, 2000. "I share Miles' concern. I realize we have a tough target to hit but we shouldn't let that force us
to do things we might later regret."
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