InsiderFlow › Investors › Carl Icahn
THE CORSAIR OF WALL STREET · ICAHN ENTERPRISES
Aggressive activism: buying stakes in badly run companies and forcing change, by persuasion or by war.
Carl Icahn is the dean of activist investors, active since the 1980s when newspapers called him a "corporate raider". The script, honed over forty years: find undervalued, badly managed companies, buy a significant stake, demand board seats, buybacks, asset sales or the CEO's head.
His 1985 takeover of TWA made him famous; the battles over Texaco, RJR Nabisco, Motorola, Netflix, Apple and eBay shaped the history of American corporate governance. The "Icahn lift" is the price pop that the mere announcement of his arrival produces.
At nearly ninety he remains active through Icahn Enterprises, the listed holding bearing his name, despite a 2023 short-seller attack that hit its valuation hard.
Icahn Enterprises's positions are public: see the 13F portfolio of Icahn Enterprises or follow it explained in the app.
Historically an immediate pop (the "Icahn lift") and months of pressure on management: his positions show up in 13F and 13D filings.
No: recent years brought heavy losses and a short-seller attack on his holding company. But the half-century track record remains among the most feared by boards.