sfully acquired small to medium sized companies at lightning speed using them for their image, technical expertise, or marketing advantage. The companies need to develop a consolidated business plan before the merger is finalized. Managers in the operational divisions of the two companies should continue running their businesses as they have in the past, because all divisions of the two companies have been highly successful individually. What the combined company lacks is a cross-functional element, and this can be seen clearly from Time Warners history of acquisitions. AOL is very good at integrating across different product lines and services and the cross-selling advantage mentioned earlier will reach across Time Warners businesses as well. Perhaps a new division headed by AOLs upper management, created specifically to span the various businesses and exploit the opportunities that lie in the economies of scale, needs to emerge. As with all mergers this large, there are sure to be organizational conflicts due to redundancies in functions, however, this is expected and has been handled well by AOL in the past. AOL management is essentially a large marketing firm integrating across various products and services and must take a control position within the newly formed company if the organization is to be successful. The new company will be called AOL Time Warner Inc. and AOL will clearly be providing the direction of the organization while Time Warner will play a somewhat passive role in the management and conduct business within the divisions as usual. AOLs highly skilled marketing will allow the new company to exploit the advantages within the numerous media types the organization will hold. With proven business plans individually, the emerging company under AOLs management with a history of well thought-out mergers, a strong cultural element, and an aggressive management team will have great opportunities. ...
