Levin apologizes for 'worst deal of century'

Jerry Levin, who sold Time Warner for AOL shares inflated by the dotcom boom, has marked the 10th anniversary of the disastrous $164 billion deal with a call for today's corporate titans to accept responsibility for the recent financial crisis.

The former Time Warner chief executive, who had avoided apologizing for the billions of dollars destroyed by the deal, on Monday made a mea culpa in an appearance on CNBC. Levin said Citigroup, AIG and General Electric had the same conglomerate problem as Time Warner. "It was not a supermarket, it was a [shopping] mall," he said. He added: "Not only the three companies I just mentioned but let's hear publicly from Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, on and on." The aftermath of the financial crisis has seen apologies from bank executives including Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs . Jeffrey Immelt, GE chief, has said his generation of leaders succumbed to "meanness and greed", but GE is likely to be infuriated by being bracketed with humbled Wall Street firms.

He defended the "magnificent concept" behind the AOL deal, but said he did not treat employee fears with enough compassion. "It's a little hard to exercise compassion, connection and love when the market is very unforgiving," he said.