Carl Icahn

"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?”"

"I knew that one of Carl’s most effective skills was to wear people down (a one-man Chinese water torture team) and that he would play the book-threat-chess-game with me all night if I allowed it—but I was oblivious to it all (which drove him crazy), bid my farewell and left the mighty financier mumbling to himself."

"As one M&A chief put it: “Carl’s dream in life is to have the only fire truck in town. Then when your house is in flames, he can hold you up for every penny you have.”"

"T. Boone Pickens, Carl Icahn, Irwin Jacobs, Sir James Goldsmith, Oscar Wyatt, Saul Steinberg, Ivan Boesky, Carl Lindner, the Belzbergs—and lesser lights about to shine, such as Nelson Peltz, Ronald Perelman, William Farley."

"Drexel’s problem was that it had no Fortune 500 client with a billion-dollar bank line to wage a takeover. But what if Drexel had the billion dollars, at the ready? Or what if they said they did (and got it later)? And what if, by their staking the word of the firm on this claim, the world believed it and acted accordingly? In the new lexicon—and universe—that Drexel would soon create, this concept would become known as the “highly confident” letter. But for now it was christened (for its emptiness) the Air Fund. “We would announce to the world that we had raised one billion dollars for hostile takeovers,” one Drexel executive recalled. “There would be no money in this fund—it was just a threat. The Air Fund stood for our not having a client with deep pockets who could be in a takeover. It was a substitute for that client we didn’t have. “That concept led to our making Carl Icahn real instead of nettlesome. Carl ended up being our Air Fund. Boone ended up being our Air Fund. We manufactured out of thin air—almost thin air—a credible takeover guy.”"

"T. Boone Pickens, Saul Steinberg, Oscar Wyatt, Carl Icahn, Ronald Perelman, Sanford Sigoloff, William Farley—"

"Kingsley’s office is a reminder that while he might have made more of a name for himself and more money on Wall Street if he had left Icahn’s shadow, at Icahn and Company he has been free to be—himself. Stacks of the Financial Times, waiting to be clipped, climb halfway to the ceiling on one side of the room; the window behind Kingsley’s desk is nearly obscured by mountains of 10Ks, annual reports, prospectuses; and Kingsley himself is barely discernible behind the cascading piles of papers that rise from his desk. “Mount Everest,” remarked a secretary as she tossed a letter onto the top. From beneath his desk, on his visitor’s side, papers spill. And there, too, rest unpacked cartons from the peregrinations of Icahn and Company over the past two decades—one from 42 Broadway, one from 25 Broadway. Out of this strange, unsightly chaos has come what Kingsley says with some pride is the “overwhelming majority” of Icahn’s targets. He selects, then he proposes, debates, sometimes is rejected by Icahn. But they have been together for twenty years, and he has a good sense of what will persuade. When Kingsley was arguing for USX, where chairman David Roderick and the steelworkers’ union had been at each others’ throats, he said, “You know, Carl, you could do again with the unions what you did in TWA.” And he is more than Icahn’s analyst. Once Icahn is in the midst of a deal, Kingsley is his constant sounding board, really his co-strategist, and they often attend negotiating sessions together."

"The point was, once an activity was so popularized that it was front-page news, what was Carl Icahn doing in it? He had made his fortune by entering a relatively undeveloped field, taking it farther than anyone else, and then—when it got too crowded and visible—moving a small step forward, in a natural progression. He had first gone into puts and calls. As that became more popular, he had mixed it with classic arbitrage. When options exploded, he had gone into risk arbitrage. Then he had decided to better control the arbitrage, by becoming the principal himself. Now it was time to become—at least often enough to give him the credibility he would need to continue his progression—the acquirer."

"The point was, once an activity was so popularized that it was front-page news, what was Carl Icahn doing in it? He had made his fortune by entering a relatively undeveloped field, taking it farther than anyone else, and then—when it got too crowded and visible—moving a small step forward, in a natural progression. He had first gone into puts and calls. As that became more popular, he had mixed it with classic arbitrage. When options exploded, he had gone into risk arbitrage. Then he had decided to better control the arbitrage, by becoming the principal himself. Now it was time to become—at least often enough to give him the credibility he would need to continue his progression—the acquirer."

"Drexel’s problem was that it had no Fortune 500 client with a billion-dollar bank line to wage a takeover. But what if Drexel had the billion dollars, at the ready? Or what if they said they did (and got it later)? And what if, by their staking the word of the firm on this claim, the world believed it and acted accordingly? In the new lexicon—and universe—that Drexel would soon create, this concept would become known as the “highly confident” letter. But for now it was christened (for its emptiness) the Air Fund. “We would announce to the world that we had raised one billion dollars for hostile takeovers,” one Drexel executive recalled. “There would be no money in this fund—it was just a threat. The Air Fund stood for our not having a client with deep pockets who could be in a takeover. It was a substitute for that client we didn’t have. “That concept led to our making Carl Icahn real instead of nettlesome. Carl ended up being our Air Fund. Boone ended up being our Air Fund. We manufactured out of thin air—almost thin air—a credible takeover guy.”"

"Kingsley’s office is a reminder that while he might have made more of a name for himself and more money on Wall Street if he had left Icahn’s shadow, at Icahn and Company he has been free to be—himself. Stacks of the Financial Times, waiting to be clipped, climb halfway to the ceiling on one side of the room; the window behind Kingsley’s desk is nearly obscured by mountains of 10Ks, annual reports, prospectuses; and Kingsley himself is barely discernible behind the cascading piles of papers that rise from his desk. “Mount Everest,” remarked a secretary as she tossed a letter onto the top. From beneath his desk, on his visitor’s side, papers spill. And there, too, rest unpacked cartons from the peregrinations of Icahn and Company over the past two decades—one from 42 Broadway, one from 25 Broadway. Out of this strange, unsightly chaos has come what Kingsley says with some pride is the “overwhelming majority” of Icahn’s targets. He selects, then he proposes, debates, sometimes is rejected by Icahn. But they have been together for twenty years, and he has a good sense of what will persuade. When Kingsley was arguing for USX, where chairman David Roderick and the steelworkers’ union had been at each others’ throats, he said, “You know, Carl, you could do again with the unions what you did in TWA.” And he is more than Icahn’s analyst. Once Icahn is in the midst of a deal, Kingsley is his constant sounding board, really his co-strategist, and they often attend negotiating sessions together."

"T. Boone Pickens, Carl Icahn, Irwin Jacobs, Sir James Goldsmith, Oscar Wyatt, Saul Steinberg, Ivan Boesky, Carl Lindner, the Belzbergs—and lesser lights about to shine, such as Nelson Peltz, Ronald Perelman, William Farley."

"T. Boone Pickens, Saul Steinberg, Oscar Wyatt, Carl Icahn, Ronald Perelman, Sanford Sigoloff, William Farley—were"

"Approaches to Profiting from a Corporate Control Battle (Carl Icahn—1975) • Attempt to convince management to liquidate the company or sell it to a “white knight” (a friendly acquirer). • Wage a proxy battle. • Launch a tender offer. • Sell back the acquired stock position to the company."

"Carl Icahn is renowned for his tenacity in negotiations. He wears down his opponents by dickering long into the night, rambling on about unre¬ lated topics. Then, when his adversaries have lost their train of thought, he picks up right where the bargaining left off, pounding on a point he hopes to carry."

"There were still more acquisitions of Horsham shares. The market purchase by the famous American acquisition expert Carl Icahn of one million subordinate shares sent a caution signal to Munk and Birchall. But there was no follow-up by him. On November 15 there was a sale of 1.1 million shares to Airaid Netherlands for $6,050,000, which added nicely to the Horsham coffers."

"was on because I had been following the adventures of business people like Carl Icahn, Western Canada’s Belzberg brothers, and Rupert Murdoch, who started with nothing, or next to nothing, built corporate empires and, coincidentally, huge personal fortunes. Desmarais emerged as the most fascinating of the lot: chairman, chief executive officer and controlling shareholder of Montreal-based Power Corporation of Canada, the tip of a large corporate pyramid worth billions of dollars. He achieved his position by investing $1 in 1951 and reinvesting the profits ever since."

"T. Boone Pickens, Carl Icahn, and Ron Perelman"