Greatest annual loss by a company (inflation adjusted)

The largest annual loss ever reported by a publicly traded company is $98.7 bn (£59.6 bn), posted for the year 2002 by media conglomerate AOL/Time Warner (USA) on 30 January 2003. This is equivalent to a loss of $136.97 bn (£105.21 bn) in 2018 when adjusted for inflation.

This record loss came about as a consequence of the February 2000 merger of Time Warner – a well-established media conglomerate – and the dot-com company America On-line (AOL). At the time of the merger, AOL had a market valuation 50% higher than Time Warner despite posting revenues of only $4.8 bn (compared with Time Warner's $26.8 bn). This meant that AOL shareholders were awarded a 55% stake in the merged company.

The collapse of the dot-com bubble, which started a few months after the merger, saw the stock market valuations of AOL's competitors plummet. Between 2000 and 2002, many tech companies went out of business altogether as investors concluded they would never find a path to profitability. This climate of investor skepticism, compounded by AOL's falling revenues and subscriber numbers, forced AOL/Time Warner to write $99 bn off the value of the merged company over the course of 2002, leading to the record loss.

The merged company dropped "AOL" from its name in 2003, and AOL was spun off as a separate company in 2009. In 2015, AOL was acquired by cable company Verizon for $4.4 bn – less than 5% of the company's value on the eve of the merger. Looking back on the deal in 2010, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes described it as "the biggest mistake in corporate history".