Face value: The unknown media mogul

摘要

When AOL and Time Warner grabbed the headlines with their mega-merger 18 months ago, he sat on the podium. But his was the face that did not grace the morning papers, the name that nobody could quite recall. Yet Bob Pitt-man, co-chief operating officer, is now beginning to emerge from the shadow of his bosses, Steve Case, chairman, and Gerald Levin, chief executive. The scale of the task facing him, as the man whose daily job is to bash the two parts of the media giant together, and so justify to sceptics the group's very existence, was neatly illustrated by the markets' response to the group's second-quarter results, unveiled on July 18th. The shares dived by 9%, even though earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation had jumped by 20% over the previous year, to $2.5 billion, and the group's pre-tax loss had fallen by nearly half, to $385m.