The adventures of Carl Icahn are a common topic on this blog, so the following Icahn observations from a WSJ-sponsored conference caught my eye:
At The Wall Street Journalís Deals & Deal Makers Conference, Icahn summed up his approach to executives of companies he takes over this way: ìThe secret is donít manage.î (Okay, he went on to say ìdonít micromanage.î)
And what wonders can be achieved with so little effort. ìThere are few companies I canít go in to today and save 30%. A lot of companies are very wasteful.î (Call it the Seinfeld theory of management, after the sit-com famous for being about nothing.) One company that decided it could do without Icahnís services is Motorola. The billionaire this year unsuccessfully fought to get on the board of the cellphone maker. ìI really didnít care a hell of a lot to be on the board,î he said of the experience.
Icahn isnít the biggest fan of U.S. and Western European CEOs. (ìWhen you get into a lot of corporationsÖtheyíre much worse than you think. I mean, theyíre really terribly run.î) He also discussed his ìDarwin Theoryî of corporate governance, according to which there is a sliding scale of intelligence on corporate ladders. Why? Each manager starting with the CEO ensures that the person below him is dumber so as not to be threatened.
No one will accuse Icahn of not speaking his mind. He was one of the few attendees at the conference to predict that the private-equity market has peaked. Of the leveraged-buyout firms like Blackstone Group that are going public, he said: ìThese guys arenít stupid and thatís one reason why theyíre monetizing.î
Meanwhile, John Carney over at DealBreaker reports the following Icahn anecdote from the WSJ conference:
Carl Icahn tried to short the stock of the Blackstone group immediately after its IPO, the billionaire “corporate raider” told an audience at a conference sponsored by the Wall Street Journal.
“I tried to borrow the stock but I couldn’t do it in time,” Icahn said.
After he spoke to the conference, Icahn asked reporters not to print the story of his attempt to short Blackstone.
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Good for Bidg that he collects his 3,000th hit on a night where he goes 5 for 6 and helped set up Carlos Lee’s walk-off bottom of the 11th grand slam to pull out an 8-5 win over the Rockies. That’s the Craig Biggio that Houstonians who have admired his magnificent 20 year career want to remember.
