King Ichan: The Biography of a Renegade Capitalist

by Mark Stevens Narrated by Mark Stevens

Overview

“I'm like the gunfighter you hire to save the town. That gunfighter is there to do good...but he'll only do what he does if he knows he'll get paid for it.” - Carl Icahn In this dramatic, deal-by-deal portrait of legendary and, until now, secretive financier Carl Icahn, bestselling business writer Mark Stevens takes us behind the scenes of some of the biggest deals in U.S. corporate history: Icahn's multibillion dollar raid on Phillips Petrolium; his bold move on Texaco's hidebound management, which netted him $500 million in the largest single transaction ever recorded by the New York Stock Exchange; Icahn's prolonged battle with CEO David Roderick to break apart the once mighty steel giant USX; and his stunning takeover of TWA. To write this fascinating audio book, Mark Stevens has utilized to the ultimate his incisive investigative skills and his extraordinary access to Icahn himself as well as Icahn's friends, associates, adversaries, and critics-those who rode on his takeover bandwagon, and those who fell beneath its wheeling and dealing. The story he has to tell is that of a bookish boy from Bayswater who went to Princeton, studied philosophy, dropped out of medical school, landed as a minor player on Wall Street, and then had a billion-dollar epiphany-a means of “controlling the destiny of corporations” that would ultimately earn him his fortune. Along with the inside details of the deals that defined the high-flying eighties, Stevens provides a vivid, totally unauthorized profile of Icahn himself. At times deceptively disorganized and absentminded but a ruthlessly brilliant tactician when the chips are down, Icahn won his place at the pinnacle of capitalism by realizing that America's CEOs could be “persuaded” to spend millions in corporate funds or search for white knights to avert a takeover that might cost them their jobs. It was a plan of predatory genius; in the seventies and eighties Icahn garnered huge profits time after time-until he devoured TWA, and found that his ambitions were greater than his management talents. With his very fortune hanging in the balance, Icahn engaged in epic negotiations with the Pension Benefit Guarantee Board, engineering what may be the premiere victory of his career. A fascinating tale with a cast of characters that includes Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, T. Boone Pickens, Dennis Levine, and most of the other key players of the takeover era. King Icahn is the first biography of the business buccaneer who changed the course of corporate America.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

``One of the greatest things I did for the human race,'' Carl Icahn has said, ``was not to become a doctor.'' Instead, this Princeton graduate from Queens, N.Y., became a keen and stubborn corporate raider, who during the 1980s junk-bond delirium parlayed leveraged cash investments into partially controlling interests (and eventually very profitable sales of shares) in such companies as Phillips Petroleum, Dan River, Texaco and TWA. The other high-flyers--Ivan Boesky, T. Boone Pickens, Dennis Levine and Michael Milken--also appear here. In this unauthorized biography, based on research and on ``virtually unlimited access'' to the financier, Icahn emerges as a crafty but apparently straight player, to whom millions of dollars poured in yearly, until the U.S. Congress called a halt to junk-bond-financed leveraged buyouts in 1991. Like a taut novel, this page turner grips the reader as Stevens ( Sudden Death: E. F. Hutton ) dramatizes Icahn's financial gambles and acerbic treatment of top management figures, whom he often accuses of poor and despotic performance to the detriment of stockholders. (June)

Library Journal

Carl Icahn was one of the most infamous American corporate raiders of the 1980s. Born in an obscure middle-class New York community, he quickly developed a scrappy, street-fighter attitude that helped him get into and through Princeton, land a job on Wall Street, and go on to become one of the most feared antagonists of corporate America. The book shows repeatedly how Icahn bought up stakes in undervalued companies and then threatened their management until they caved into his demands, eventually allowing him to cash out with enormous profits. Only later in his life did he falter with the buyout of TWA and its ensuing bankruptcy. While Icahn's days as financial engineer may be over, there is no denying his impact upon the American corporate landscape, especially in the areas of shareholder rights and more active boards of directors willing to challenge business executives. This book by business writer Stevens is suitable for large nonfiction/biography collections in public libraries.-- Richard Drezen, Merrill Lynch Lib., New York

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170347391
Publisher:	Ascent Audio
Publication date:	11/08/2010
Edition description:	Unabridged

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