Steve Ross (Time-Warner CEO)

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Steve Ross (September 17, 1927 - December 20, 1992) was responsible for the 1990 merger of Warner Communications and Time Inc. into the world's largest media and entertainment conglomerate, Time Warner.

Born Steven Jay Rechnitz in Brooklyn, New York, Ross followed his World War II service in the Navy with studies at Paul Smith's College (located in Paul Smiths, New York).

Kinney Parking Company was originally a funeral home company which had expanded with the acquisition of New York parking lots, office cleaning firms and construction companies. Joining Kinney when he married the owner's daughter, Carol Rosenthal (in 1954), Ross succeeded in expanding his father-in-law's funeral company.

In 1958, he began arranging an alliance between the Manhattan-based funeral business and New Jersey's Kinney System. The companies merged in 1962. After Kinney National Service moved from downtown Newark to 10 Rockefeller Plaza in November, 1962, Ross became the company president

Ross was the co-CEO of Kinney National Company from 1969 to 1972. He became the sole CEO, president and chairman of Warner Communications in 1972. The merger of Time Inc. and Warner Communications, Inc., which began in 1989, was finalized on January 10, 1990. In 1990, Ross took home a record $78.2 million in total pay.

When Ross died from prostate cancer at the age of 65 in the last weeks of 1992, Gerald Levin stepped in January 21, 1993, as Time Warner's sole CEO.

He is inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 2003, as one of the founders of the New York Cosmos.