Carl Celian Icahn (born February 16, 1936) is an American billionaire financier, corporate raider, and private equity investor. His net worth is US$14 billion as of 2008, making him the 46th richest man in the world.
He grew up in NYC's Queens and studied philosophy at Princeton. Then went to Wall Street with $4,000 in poker winnings.
He gained reputation for buying into troubled companies, forcing management to improve, restructure, and buy back stock. Once considered the world's most dangerous shareholder activist, he is now having trouble effecting vast management changes.
Icahn made an attempted run as a major shareholder of Time Warner owning about 3.3% of the company valued at billions of dollars. He has been actively attempting to influence the direction of Time Warner, often in conflict with its former Chief Executive, Richard Parsons. Although Time Warner recently sold 5% of its AOL division, Icahn has been pressing for additional action to increase shareholder value.
On February 7, 2006, a group led by Icahn and Lazard Frères CEO Bruce Wasserstein unveiled a 343-page proposal calling for the breakup of Time Warner into four companies and stock buybacks totaling approximately $20 billion.
On February 17, 2006, the Icahn-led group agreed with Time Warner to not contest the re-election of TW's slate of board members at the 2006 shareholders meeting. In exchange for the Icahn group's cooperation, Time Warner will buy back up $20 billion of stock, nominate more independent members to the board of directors, cut $1 billion of costs by 2007, and continue discussions with the Icahn group over their proposal, particularly on the future of Time Warner Cable.
Recently, Icahn was shown to be interested in the takeover of Yahoo! and the ousting of Jerry Yang from his current position as CEO to allow Microsoft to purchase the web company.
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