J. Richard Munro, who began his career at Time Inc. in the circulation department and rose to become chairman and chief executive, engineering the company’s merger with Warner Communications Inc. in 1989 that formed what at the time was the largest media and entertainment corporation in the world, died Aug. 11 at a hospice center in Naples, Fla. He was 93.

The cause was melanoma, said his son John R. Munro Jr.

Munro spent more than 30 years at Time Inc., the publishing empire that decades after its founding by Henry R. Luce still commanded the attention of millions of readers with Time – its flagship newsweekly – and other magazines including Life, People, Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Money.

The corporation, which also published books, moved into television in an expansion that coincided with Munro’s career. After gaining experience as an ad salesman at Sports Illustrated, he became publisher of the magazine in 1969 and then ascended to the corporate executive ranks, eventually becoming group vice president for video.

Described by the New York Times as a “genial and temperate leader,” Munro was credited with helping build HBO, the subscription cable channel, into a juggernaut and one of Time Inc.’s most valuable television holdings.

He became president and chief executive in 1980 and board chairman in 1986. Leading the company from his office in the towering Time-Life Building in Manhattan, he steered the corporation through a period when the business world was rocked by mergers and acquisitions – and ultimately helped pull off a dramatic one of his own.

In March 1989, Time Inc. and Warner Communications Inc., a major force in the film, record and cable TV industries, announced their intention to merge and create Time Warner Inc., a behemoth that would be far less vulnerable to takeover bids than Time and Warner would have been on their own.

Munro’s counterpart at Warner was chairman Steven J. Ross. Nicholas J. Nicholas Jr., a protégé of Munro’s who by then had succeeded him as president at Time Inc., also played a significant role in negotiations. The executives initially planned to complete the merger through a stock swap.

“This gives us a very strong balance sheet,” Munro told the Times when the deal was announced. “We won’t have to fire anybody, we don’t have to sell anything and we don’t have to borrow to accomplish this. It gives us a very large treasury – and we have plans to use it.”

Shortly thereafter, Paramount Communications Inc. launched a hostile takeover bid, offering $12 billion for Time in a move that nearly ended the deal. Munro had earlier vowed that no such takeover, by any company, would be allowed on his watch.

Paramount challenged the Time-Warner merger in Delaware, where all three companies were incorporated, but eventually lost. In July 1989, the Delaware Supreme Court approved a deal in which Time Inc. bought Warner Communications Inc. for $14 billion.

Munro and Ross initially stayed on as co-chairmen and co-chief executives of the newly created Time Warner Inc. Keeping a pledge he had made upon taking the helm at Time in 1980, Munro retired in 1990.

Under the leadership of Gerald M. Levin, Time Warner later merged with Turner Broadcasting System and then the internet giant AOL. The latter deal, quickly recognized as one of the most disastrous unions in corporate history, led to heavy losses and the eventual purchase of Time Warner by AT&T.

John Richard Munro was born in Syracuse, N.Y., on Jan. 26, 1931. His parents divorced when he was about 5, and he divided his time thereafter between the Syracuse area, where his father ran a gas station, and West Palm Beach, Fla., where his mother worked as a furniture saleswoman and bartender.

When he was in high school, Munro completed half of the academic year in New York and the other half in Florida. After his graduation, he joined the Marine Corps and served in the Korean War. He received three awards including the Purple Heart and spent a year in a military hospital recovering from his wounds before enrolling in college.

In 1957, he received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., and joined Time Inc. the same year. His career later survived the flop of a new magazine, TV-Cable Week, that cost the company between $40 million and $50 million.

Survivors include his wife of more than six decades, the former Carol Keeney; three sons, John R. Munro Jr., Doug Munro and Mac Munro; a brother; six grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter.

In his retirement, Munro served on corporate and nonprofit boards and volunteered as a tutor and mentor to disadvantaged students in Florida. He reflected with humility on the career that had taken him to the highest echelon of business leaders in the United States.

“I just went to work every day,” he told the Naples Daily News in 2017. “It just happened.”