Word: icahn
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Want to know how Carl Icahn thinks? Icahn will tell you a story. He was at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas a few months ago and played poker with professional gamblers. In a $40,000 game, he wound up as one of two players left in a hand of seven-card stud. Icahn had two pairs; his opponent was showing four to a straight. The pro tipped off Icahn that he had seen his cards and said that because Icahn was an amateur, he felt obliged to tell him so. The pro then bet the table...
...story says a lot about what Icahn's latest target, media giant Time Warner (which publishes TIME), is up against as the renowned Wall Street maverick pushes the company to boost its stock price, stalled at about $18. Icahn's prescription is strong (and expensive) medicine: a $20 billion stock buyback and the spin-off of its vast cable operations. Icahn, the Princeton University philosophy major from Queens, N.Y., who staked his earliest ventures with money he won playing poker in the Army, loves taking on the big boys. He won't be bluffed--and he often wins...
...Icahn, 69, hasn't mellowed a bit since his corporate-raider days in the 1980s, when he made millions of dollars buying stock and forcing asset sales, stock buybacks and special dividends by the likes of Texaco and Phillips Petroleum. In the '90s, with notable exceptions like RJR Nabisco (in which he bought a stake and pushed the company to break up), he operated more quietly, in beaten-down areas of the bond market. But now he's back on the big stage rattling major corporations--and loving...
...latest adventures, Icahn owes a big assist to the $1 trillion hedge-fund industry, to which he is closely allied and which gives him financial heft he hasn't enjoyed since being backed by Michael Milken's junk bonds 20 years ago. And in the post-scandal age, yesterday's raider is today's shareholder activist. Icahn is playing that role to the hilt, lashing out at executive mismanagement and excess. In his view, corporate America is plagued by CEOs and boards compromised by cozy friendships and financial relationships--to the detriment of tough decision making and healthy share prices...
...taking on Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons, with his company's vast array of media properties, including CNN, HBO, America Online, Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema, and a current market value of $85 billion, Icahn has chosen his biggest mark yet. Time Warner has been struggling since the disastrous merger in 2000 with AOL, which sent the company's share price plummeting. An Icahn-led group picked up 2.6% of the company, and "a boatload of hedge funds and other short-term players are sitting in the stock," said Patrick McGurn, special counsel at Institutional Shareholder Services, which advises...