Carl Icahn Creates Twitter Account, Beats Ackman To The Punch
Watch out Twittersphere, outspoken investor Carl Icahn has joined your ranks. The billionaire hedge-funder posted his first—and thus far only—tweet yesterday and has already gained more than 7,000 followers.
Twitter is great. I like it almost as much as I like Dell.
— Carl Icahn (@Carl_C_Icahn) June 20, 2013
Twitter gives Icahn, who is seldom short on words, a new outlet for his sharp tongue, public battles and—most importantly—market-shaking positions. In fact, Icahn is one of a small few of investors who can cause stocks to surge based on his individual position, sometimes called the Icahn bump. After Icahn spoke highly of the likes of Motorola, Biogen and Chesapeake Energy, to the benefit of investors. And in the past 13 years, Icahn Enterprises has scored a return of 1,120 percent—389 percent in the past four years alone.
More recently, Icahn has waged a public war with fellow billionaire Michael Dell. While Dell hopes to take the company bearing his name private in a $24.4 billion buyout deal, Icahn believed the price should be higher. So what did he do? He put his money where his mouth is and countered with a deal that would pay shareholders a $12-per-share dividend, in either cash or stock, while the company would remain public.
Previously, the $20-billion investor was involved in an even more public battle with Pershing Square Capital Management’s Bill Ackman during CNBC’s Friday Night Smackdown. When Ackman took a short position on Herbalife, calling it a pyramid scheme, Icahn had plenty to say on the matter.
He’s looking for a company to destroy,” said Icahn. “He’s basically lying. (Herbalife) could be the mother of all short-squeezes.”
Soon, however, personal tensions bubbled over, as the two began bickering over a 10-year-old legal dispute that resulted in Icahn paying Ackman’s investor’s $4.5 million plus interest. Icahn called Ackman dishonest and a “major loser,” Ackman accused Icahn of being a bully “not used to someone standing up to him.”
Well, Carl, Twitter is one race in which you’ve undisputedly beat Ackman, since he has yet to create an account. Let’s hope you use the social network for good—a la Warren Buffett—and not evil—think Donald Trump.
