During a conference call to reports Liberty Media's second-quarter earnings, CEO John Malone told analysts the company was open to exchanging its stake in Time Warner for AOL's online access business. Liberty owns 103 million Time Warner shares, or about 2.8 percent of the company. Such a swap would value AOL's access business at around $1.6 billion, lower than the $2 billion to $3 billion analysts say its worth. A swap would lower Time Warner's tax burden, however, possibly making the deal more attractive. Earlier this year, Liberty performed a similar swap with News Corp., trading its stake in the company for control over DirecTV.

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