Customer Reviews

King Icahn: The Biography of a Renegade Capitalist

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An interesting & detailed look into the hunting methods & machinations of the notorious corporate raider of the 1980's , Carl Icahn . A shylock-like shady character from Brooklyn ,Icahn comes across as a brilliant Machiavellian Wall Street shark whose humble lower middle class origins seemed to have whetted his appetite for his soon to be corporate preys.Interestingly , like some other legendary investors ( George Soros , Jim Rogers, Benjamin Graham etc) Icahn was drawn to philosophy from an early age and went on to study it at Princeton ______after all Schopenhaur himself was a hard-nosed savvy investor! Also like most legendary investors he grew up poor .This book dissects in detail the anatomy of Icahn's raids on Texaco , TWA and others, along with the doomed(for most investors) but brilliant(for Icahn & his clique) concept of taking control of susceptible companies through leveraged buyouts financed with junk bonds & subsequently selling off the family silver to line his own pocket! He also perfected the art of "greenmail" by blackmailing vulnerable managements and thus enriching himself at the expense of his fellow shareholders . Icahn comes across as a lean,mean, street-smart SOB who had the brains and the chutzpah to take on the most entrenched managements on Wall Street .

This is a mediocre biography and a poorly written book on deal making. While it does shed some light on the character of Carl Icahn, it does a lousy job of describing and analysing the deals involved. The author, from time to time, mentions how many shares of a target company Icahn had acquired but never tell the readers how many percentage of interest in a company those shares represent. Or, the author tell you Icahn made several millions in a particular deal, but never points out how much Icahn has invested in the first place. This makes it very hard for the readers to follow the deal and to see how great Ichan is at doing deals.

If readers are interested in deal making, I highly recommend "The Vulture Investors" by Rosenberg. Actually, for those who are interested in Icahn's life, reading a few chapters from "The Vulture Investor" and "Predator's Ball" is even better than reading the whole of this book.

King Icahn: The Biography of a Renegade Capitalist, by Mark Stevens

"If you can dream-and not make dreams your master;
If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ` em up with worn out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them "hold on!"

If you can talk with the crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With 60 seconds worth of distance run,
Yours is the earth and everything that's in it,
And-which is more-you'll be a Man, my son!"

-Rudyard Kipling, "Brother Square-Toes"
-Rewards and Fairies,
A verse Icahn says has influenced
his business career from the earliest days.

From starting out as a stock broker at the age of 24 with Dreyfus & Co. in 1961 just as the Street was in the midst of a roaring bull market Carl worked his net worth up to around $100k only to lose it in the inevitable downturn associated with the stock markets boom bust style.

"That the stock market had bested him, would prove for Icahn to be a blessing in disguise." He decided to move into options and as most brokers do changed firms a few times, ending up at Gruntal and Co. to build an options department. "..He had a finely tuned antenna for finding where the money was and partaking of it"

Anyone in the brokerage business or in any sales job will love the stories about Carl building his business in a true aggressive Wall Street salesman style.

Ready to move on to bigger and more challenging ventures, Carl convinces his uncle to put up $400,000 so he can buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. He promises an 8% return plus some equity in the new company. Without giving away too much more of the story I can say that it is a truly inspiring, step by step explanation of how Carl worked his way from a $100 a week broker trainee to owning his own small brokerage firm to a mega corporate raider or, "renegade capitalist" with detailed corporate battles along the way.

The book really hit home for me as having worked on Wall Street for 11 years, including about 3 years at Gruntal & Co. and similar to Icahn moving on to more challenging ventures. I read the book in the early stages of building, along with my partner a $25,000,000 real estate holding company in 5 years. It was one of the many books that gave me the push to keep doing deals and growing the company. My other reviews and blog ( bloglines.com/blog/KevinKingston ) cover similar inspiring business books.

By Kevin Kingston, Author of, A 20,000% Gain in Real Estate

Do you know Carl Icahn? I mean beyond what headlines make him out to be.

This book offers incredible insight on a LBO King from his humble upbringings to his now premier centership at the top of business.

To tell you the truth, I didnt know much about him before reading the book. However, after reading this book (careful of tone in book), I came to wonder about how "great" this person is in getting his way.

Fascinated read that will make you appreciate his rise to great Fortune.

I wanted to understand a little more about the dynamics and facets of Carl Icahn and the interactionbs between corporate America and Carl Ichan ... and this book accomplished that. Stevens adds more to the picture than just a hyped version of "Gordon Gecko" vs. a sterotyped (positive or negative) corporate America.

This book is fantastic. It is brilliantly written and lets you get right inside Icahn's head as he stalks each prey! You can almost feel the squirming of the CEO's he tortures. The descriptions of his strategic thinking are amazing. This book is a MUST READ for anyone interested in activist investing. My most influential book.