Richard Parsons, the former head of Time Warner and Citigroup, is the new interim CEO of the LA Clippers, the NBA said Friday.
Parsons, a former college basketball player who has also worked for a governor and a president, told the LA Times his goal is to “get things stabilized and make sure the franchise does not lose value.’’
A former corporate lawyer, Parsons will need all of his legal and political skills as he tries to sell the team over the objections of current owner Donald Sterling, who has been banned for life because of his racist rants.
Parsons, a lifelong New Yorker who is married with three grown children, was born in Bedford-Stuyvesant and grew up in Jamaica.
He attended the University of Hawaii, where he played varsity basketball. Then he went to Albany Law School, where he graduated first in his class.
He also got the highest score on the bar exam of all the 3,600 new lawyers who took the test in 1971.
Parsons — whose grandfather was a groundskeeper on the Rockefeller estate — joined Gov. Nelson Rockefeller’s legal staff after completing law school.
A moderate Republican, he followed Rockefeller to Washington when he became vice president under Gerald Ford.
Ford appointed him a senior White House aide.
Although he never ran for public office, Parsons’ name was floated for mayor at least twice. He was a partner in a law firm that also employed Rudy Giuliani, and the two became friends. But they had a falling out when rumors surfaced that then-Sen. Al D’Amato put out feelers to Parsons to see if he’d like to seek the job himself.
More recently, there was talk that Parsons might run as the GOP candidate for mayor to succeed Michael Bloomberg.
Parsons joined the board of Time Warner in 1991 and later became CEO, replacing Gerald Levin, who engineered its disastrous merger with AOL.
One of his first acts was removing AOL from the company’s name.
Parsons, the former head of Dime Savings Bank, became chairman of Citigroup in 2009. He retired in 2012 after helping the financial giant weather the financial crisis.
He also owns a vineyard in Italy.