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More Pressure on Time Warner

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Times Staff Writer

Dissident shareholder Carl Icahn fired another salvo at media giant Time Warner Inc. on Monday, vowing in a government filing to seek one or more director seats at the company’s annual meeting next year.

Icahn, who has a 2.6% stake in Time Warner, is pressuring Chief Executive Richard Parsons to move more aggressively to boost the company’s stock price.

In a statement, he said that shareholder-nominated directors were needed given the “difference of opinion between many large shareholders and management concerning the direction of the company.”

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Icahn wants the New York conglomerate to spin off its cable unit and to launch a $20-billion stock buyback. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the billionaire financier said those moves would help bring Time Warner’s stock price closer to the $26 to $28 a share that his group believes it is worth. It closed at $18.21 on Monday.

Also, Time Warner moved to beef up its political influence in Washington, hiring as a top lobbyist Tim Berry, the chief of staff to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas).

The addition of Berry, 37, continues an overhaul of Time Warner’s small Washington office, which had been largely staffed by holdovers from Dulles, Va.-based America Online since it acquired Time Warner in January 2001. Berry’s hiring was reported Monday by the publications Broadcasting and Roll Call.

The hiring of Berry is aimed at boosting Time Warner’s influence with the GOP as well as improving its visibility on intellectual property protection, which sometimes took a back seat to AOL and Time Warner cable’s interest in promoting music, movies and other content over the freewheeling Internet.

Berry will report to Carol Melton, a former Federal Communications Commission official and Viacom Inc. lobbyist, who joined Time Warner earlier this year.

As DeLay’s chief of staff since August 2002, Berry was DeLay’s right-hand man as the majority leader came under fire over alleged ethics violations.

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The controversy centers on DeLay’s connections to former GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The House Ethics Committee is expected this fall to begin an investigation of overseas trips DeLay took with Abramoff, who was recently indicted in Florida on federal fraud charges.

In his new job as vice president of global public policy at Time Warner, Berry will lobby the federal government on entertainment and communications issues. High on Time Warner’s agenda, said company spokeswoman Kathy McKiernan, are boosting intellectual property protection for music, movies and other creative works, telecommunication policy reform and holding the line on increases in postal rates.

In a statement, DeLay praised Berry as “a complete professional. His dedication, integrity, work ethic and vast experience have served me well during his 10 years of working with me in the House of Representatives.”

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