Shares of Time Warner Inc., the world's largest media company, rose as much as 2.4 percent after the New York Post said the company is in talks to sell a stake in America Online to Microsoft Corp.
Microsoft, the world's biggest software company, would pay New York-based Time Warner an unspecified amount of cash for a stake in AOL and combine it with its Internet unit, MSN, the newspaper said, citing two unidentified people familiar with the situation.
Time Warner shares rose 38 cents, or 2.1 percent, to $18.30 in 7:12 a.m. trading on the Inet ATS trading system before markets opened in New York, and earlier rose to $18.35. Microsoft traded at the equivalent of $26.31 in Germany, unchanged from yesterday's close on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft's MSN faces increasing competition from Yahoo! Inc., the most visited Web site, and from Google Inc., the world's most popular Internet search engine, and all three are looking to add features. For Time Warner, selling an AOL stake may help Chief Executive Richard Parsons fend off investor Carl Icahn, who has been buying the company's shares and demanding changes to boost their price.
The blood of two evils unite.
