Gerald Levin, the former Time Warner CEO who engineered a disastrous mega-merger, is dead at 84

Gerald Levin, who led Time Warner Media into a disastrous $182 billion merger with the internet provider America Online, has died at the age of 84. Levin had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, although his cause of death on Wednesday was not given in media reports. Earlier in his career, the Time Inc. executive helped turn a sleepy cable channel called Home Box Office into a national network soon known as HBO. He went on to head the company eventually known as Time Warner, leading it into the 2001 merger that created AOL Time Warner, but was unwound in 2009, seven years after Levin resigned his job.