Carl Icahn: Tappan, TWA's London Routes and the Hindenburg Report

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Carl Icahn grew up in Far Rockaway, Queens, the son of school teachers; his father was a synagogue cantor and an avowed atheist. He wrote a Princeton philosophy thesis on the empiricist criterion of meaning, graduated in 1957, left NYU medical school and joined Wall Street in 1961. In 1968 he used $150,000 of his own money and a $400,000 loan from his uncle to buy a New York Stock Exchange seat. In 1978 he took a controlling stake in appliance maker Tappan, won a proxy fight and forced its sale to Electrolux for a $2.7 million profit. In 1985 he began a leveraged takeover of TWA, taking it private by 1988.

He sold TWA's London routes to American Airlines for $445 million and left with a $469 million personal profit, while TWA carried $540 million in debt and went bankrupt. Recast as an activist shareholder, he pressed Yahoo to accept Microsoft's offer, pushed eBay to spin off PayPal, made $800 million selling half his Netflix stake, and moved Apple's stock with a social media post. In 2016 he endorsed Donald Trump and advised on regulation while owning 82 percent of CVR Energy, which stood to save over $200 million a year; he stepped down in 2017. A 39 percent Hertz stake cost him nearly $2 billion in 2020.

• He is described as a real world inspiration for Gordon Gekko.
• His first wife, former ballerina Liba, sued to void a prenuptial agreement she signed while eight months pregnant.
• His 2022 proxy fight over McDonald's pork suppliers' gestation crates won about 1 percent of shareholder votes.
• He signed the Giving Pledge, and Mount Sinai renamed its medical school the Icahn School of Medicine.
• A 2023 Hindenburg Research report on Icahn Enterprises' dividends and his margin loans sent its shares down 20 percent in a day.