Icahn Capital LP
Carl Icahn
Carl Icahn runs Icahn Capital, the money-management arm of his Icahn Enterprises holding, which he has led as chief executive since 2007. Born in 1936, he studied philosophy at Princeton, graduating in 1957, drifted through medical school and military service, and started on Wall Street in 1961 as a stockbroker at Dreyfus Corporation. In 1968 he founded his own firm, Icahn & Co., built around risk arbitrage and options trading—the early schooling for the activist style that came to define him. Icahn hunts for undervalued companies where management's interests have drifted from shareholders', builds large stakes, and then pushes hard: board seats, sell-offs, cost cuts, leadership overhauls. In the 1980s this earned him the "corporate raider" label, and his most retold chapter is the 1985 hostile takeover of Trans World Airlines, which he later took private, clearing a $469 million profit while leaving the airline drowning in debt. Later campaigns carried him into Apple, Netflix, eBay, Motorola, Time Warner, and Herbalife; his 2012 Netflix stake alone returned more than $800 million within a year. Since 2011 Icahn has stopped managing money for outside investors, funding Icahn Capital's positions with his own and his partners' capital instead. He joined the Giving Pledge in 2010, committing to give away more than half his fortune.
$8.55B