Mark Stevens

"Why, I thought, would Icahn care about book advances that—even if we had a bestseller on our hands—would pale by his financial standards. At first, I chalked it up to Carl’s voracious appetite for every dollar he could claim but one night after I trounced him in two sets of tennis 6-0, 6-0 and he brooded about his losses over dinner, I connected the dots. Carl wasn’t interested in sharing anything with anyone at any time. He wanted the agreement, which gave him limited rights of approval on the manuscript, in order to stall, alter or otherwise use his contractual leverage to altogether kill the book. To prove that he in fact outsmarted me and was right at the outset: there would be no biography."

"discovered that he was a speculator of sorts, a financial genius and a bully, who had managed to go head-to-head with the corporate establishment and force them into taking actions they resisted. In virtually every case, these captains of industry erected firewalls of lawyers to protect their positions, did everything"

"On many occasions, Carl told me he didn’t believe in the concept of “fairness.” Not when it came to business. “If two sides to a negotiation sit down to work something out, say how to split $100 million, conventional wisdom holds that a fair approach is always best: ideally 50\50,” Icahn had said. “But I want 100 percent. Why should I be satisfied with anything less?”"

"In the midst of our marathon talks—virtually all initiated by Carl leveling one threat after another—I made it clear that if he didn’t cooperate, his side of the story would never make it into the narrative. But because he was certain that he could quash the book in its tracks, this never seemed to alter his calculus. Until he called me one night at 2:43 am “Look Stevens, why don’t we do the book as partners?” Bingo. Breakthrough. Or so I thought. Carl’s idea was to create a partnership agreement whereby he would commit to a tell-all about his life and in return he would share in the advance and royalties 70/30, with guess who laying claim to the 70 percent. Of course I objected and after weeks of wrangling over a “fair” deal, we moved from 70/30 to 65/35 to 60/40 to 58/42 to 55/45 and ultimately to the only split I would agree to: 50/50."