Time Warner to pay $2.65 bln settlement

Time Warner is expected to pay $2.65 billion to settle charges by shareholders that it overstated revenue to gain approval for its merger with AOL, according to a settlement approved by a U.S. federal judge.

Time Warner agreed last August to the settlement with a lead group of investors who accused AOL of inflating its revenue by $1.7 billion between January 1999 and August 2002.

Citing “overwhelming support” for the settlement by nearly all of the estimated 600,000 claimants, U.S. District Court Judge Shirley Wohl Kram wrote she found it “fair, reasonable and adequate.”

The settlement brings to a close a painful chapter in the disastrous 2002 merger that wiped out more than $200 billion in shareholder value and gave media consolidation a bad name.

With the most recent settlement, Time Warner has paid more than $3.5 billion to resolve the accounting issues.