Unlock the Editor’s Digest free of charge
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite tales on this weekly publication.
Richard “Dick” Parsons, an influential US company government who led two troubled corporations by means of their most dire durations, has died.
Parsons died on Thursday based on an announcement from funding financial institution Lazard, the place he had been a board member. The New York Occasions reported the reason for demise was bone most cancers, citing Ronald Lauder, the inheritor to the wonder firm Estée Lauder, the place Parsons had additionally served on the board of administrators. Parsons, one in every of America’s highest-ranking Black executives for twenty years, was 76.
Parsons took over as chair of Citigroup in February 2009 because the financial institution was reeling from the 2008 monetary disaster. He had been on the board since 1996, however took the chair position shortly after its $300bn bailout from the federal authorities. Parsons told the Financial Times in 2009 that his background and enterprise connections could be an asset at Citi.
“The affect and the involvement of the taxpayer and regulators over this firm is important,” he mentioned on the time.
Parsons confronted the controversial choice about whether or not to maintain Vikram Pandit as Citi chief government. He in the end stored Pandit and Citi swung again to revenue.
Parsons additionally fought to maintain Citi from being taken over by the federal authorities. He supported Barack Obama for his White Home bid and urged the brand new president’s administration to not nationalise the nation’s ailing banks.
“I used to be flying air cowl as our floor troops received their act collectively,” Parsons told the FT. “Now it’s time for the bottom warfare to begin.” He stepped down from Citi in 2012.
Parsons beforehand jumped right into a firefight in 2002 when he took over Time Warner after its disastrous merger with AOL.
Accomplished in 2001, the merger got here on the peak of the web growth and valued Time Warner at $164bn. However it shortly suffered a sequence of big writedowns, together with a $100bn cost in 2002.
At Time Warner, Parsons sparred with activist investor Carl Icahn who fought for management of the media big in 2006.
Earlier than his company life, Parsons served in state and federal authorities as a counsel for former New York governor Nelson Rockefeller and as a White Home aide for president Gerald Ford.
Parsons was as a member of Obama’s financial transition crew in 2008. He additionally served on the boards of the Apollo Theater in New York and the Nationwide Museum of African American Historical past and Tradition in Washington.
Parsons was additionally CEO at Nationwide Basketball Affiliation crew the Los Angeles Clippers.
“Dick Parsons was a superb and transformational chief and a large of the media trade who led with integrity and by no means shied away from a problem,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver mentioned on Thursday.
