Posted on 08/14/2002 6:56:07 AM PDT by HAL9000
DULLES, Va. (AP) — David M. Colburn, who negotiated many of America Online's biggest deals, reportedly has left the company.Colburn was locked out of his office on Friday at the company's Dulles headquarters only days after AOL named Jonathan F. Miller as its new chief executive, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
Colburn's business affairs division was involved in advertising and commerce deals that have led to investigations of AOL's accounting practices by the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission.
His departure came just days before Wednesday's deadline for corporate executives to vouch for their accounting statements.
The Post said that late last month AOL relieved Colburn of his day-to-day responsibilities for business affairs and shifted him to a strategic planning job.
AOL did not immediately return a phone call Wednesday from The Associated Press.
At AOL Colburn led a unit of about 100 people who brokered hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising and commerce contracts.
America Online and Richard D. Parsons, chief executive of parent company AOL Time Warner Inc., have said the deals were made based on accepted accounting principles and reviewed by the company's outside auditor. Parsons said AOL would cooperate with federal investigators.
The Post said Colburn declined to come to the door of his Potomac, Md., home, but told a reporter through his intercom that he had no comment.
The other issue is whether he was under contract with them. It isn’t that unusual.
Our COO was ushered out the door once. He spent the remaining three years of a five year contract sitting at home while collecting full pay and benefits plus a percentage of sales from products.
Sort of an expensive termination, IMO, but it’s a good gig if you can get it I suppose.
Yup. Or as in the movie "Fun With Dick and Jane" when you pull into the parking lot and they are removing your name from the reserved space.
BTW "Fun" was a very funny movie even though it does star Hanoi Jane. Guy gets laid off and proceeds to go into the robbery business. His first attempt at robbery at an all-night drug store is VERY funny.
They have done everything on the list of "How to Rip-off Your Customers" and some of their lemmings are starting to catch on. They had to know that this was going to happen at some point in time, but hopefully, after they had reaped their harvest of $$.
There are websites devoted to dealing with AOL abuses. How long did they think they could get by with it?
That used to be standard operating procedure in the oil industry, 30 years ago.
More recently, they've gotten much more sophisticated. They call you to the boss's office early one morning, and you walk in and the Death Angel from HR is sitting there with the boss, waiting for you.
Or the boss comes by your office and closes the door behind him and pronounces the magic words, "Bob, you got a minute?"
BTW...TW can't divest AOL....becuase of the debt load....so they're stuck...and in big trouble...because Parsons is NOT the guy to fix this....he's clueless
And you're still there?!
How long has P. T. Barnum been dead?
AOL SUCKS.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.