March 14 (Bloomberg) -- Time Warner Inc. agreed to pay $117.7 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the California Public Employees Retirement System over the 2001 merger with AOL.
Calpers's 2003 suit alleged accounting irregularities at AOL, the Internet service company that combined with New York-based Time Warner in January 2001.
The settlement is Time Warner's fourth this year related to the acquisition, for a total of $623 million. Time Warner, owner of People magazine and the second- largest U.S. cable-television company, set aside $1.05 billion to settle litigation arising from the merger.
``There are probably one or two others still to go,'' said James Goss, an analyst at Barrington Research in Chicago who rates Time Warner shares ``outperform.''
Calpers said the settlement excludes the accounting firm Ernst & Young LLP, another defendant in the case. Calpers spokesman Clark McKinley declined to comment on how much the pension fund is seeking from Ernst & Young.
The fund is no longer seeking recovery from the other defendants in the complaint, including AOL's former Chief Executive Officer Steve Case and unidentified financial advisers.
Shares of Time Warner, the world's largest media company, rose 3 cents to $19.45 at 4 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. They've fallen 11 percent this year.
Topped Class Action
Calpers received about 17 times what it would have gotten had it remained in a class-action suit, Peter Mixon, the pension fund's general counsel, said in a statement.
``We're pleased to be in the process of bringing these issues related to the AOL Time Warner merger to a close,'' said Keith Cocozza, a spokesman for Time Warner.
Time Warner agreed earlier this month to pay $144 million to Ohio and five state pension funds. In February, the company agreed to pay $260 million to end a suit led by the University of California and $105 million to settle with the California State Teachers Retirement System.
Those investors had opted out of a $2.4 billion class- action settlement in the second quarter of 2005.
To contact the reporters on this story: Cecile Daurat in New York at cdaurat@bloomberg.net .
