Carl Icahn Quotes
120 Carl Icahn Quotes
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[On buying nearly 3 million shares in two days and emerging with a stake of 40.6%] That blitz was the most decisive act of the whole thing.
Carl Icahn
We are deeply committed to and concerned about the future of TWA… We would expect to operate TWA in such a way as to maximize the long-term interest of TWA in such a way as to maximize the long-term interest of TWA, its employees and the traveling public.
Carl Icahn
[On being told he was a 50% man of his word] Wait a second, wait a second. Didn’t I say that I wouldn’t buy more stock if Lorenzo didn’t buy more stock? Didn’t I keep my word there? [‘Yes, Carl, you did. Okay, okay, Carl, let’s say you’re a 75% man of your word, okay?’] Hey, I’m at least 80 percent. Jim, give me 80.
Carl Icahn
I think it’s terrible. They turn down Boone’s [T. Boone Pickens] first offer of $60, buy him off with $53, and give the shareholders $43. I came in, bought stock, and called up First Boston and Morgan Stanley and said, ‘Hey look, why don’t you put some more points on there?’ All they had to do was call me back and say, ‘Okay, we’re going to put another 3 or 4 points on the table.’ Lipton wouldn’t let them call me back, and I don’t think they realized it. Never! If Phillips stays independent, Lipton will say, ‘I’ve saved you from the two most notorious, horrible raiders in the world, Pickens and Icahn.’ I say, ‘You will have cost Phillips a billion dollars extra!
Carl Icahn
[On being asked ‘What have you got against pilots?’] You guys do a marvelous job. I could never fly like that. I have all the confidence in the world in you. The only problem is you get paid too much money.
Carl Icahn
All right, you don’t like Lorenzo. But Lorenzo is telling you something – that it’s a free enterprise society. How can one airline pay one guy $120,000 a year when the guy at the other airline is flying the same plane for $30,000 or $40,000? It makes no sense. The company will go bankrupt. You’ll get another two years out of it, and they’ll go bust, and what good does that do you? Like the steel industry. The union did such a great job that they lost their jobs. They lost the industry! If the unions do too good a job, it’s no good.
Carl Icahn
Let me ask you a question: what about a young captain who goes to war and wins a battle for us and gets the Congressional Medal of Honor when he’s twenty-four years old? Doesn’t he show a hell of a lot of capability? Isn’t he cool? He does a hell of a job for the country, doesn’t he? Look at the fighter pilot, or the captain who takes his whole company and leads it on to victory and still can run the whole thing.
Carl Icahn
If we’re going to make the company successful, you are going to have to look reality in the eye, and the reality is lower wages.
Carl Icahn
I’m not fighting pilots. That’s not my function. I’m aying, ‘Look, Lorenzo’s not all wrong on this subject.’ What he did wrong, from what I hear, is that he didn’t live up to his word. Made promises he didn’t keep.
Carl Icahn
Intellectual security… the confidence that I can outthink and control a situation.
Carl Icahn
I’m 98 percent sure I’m going to win. I’m not going to raise my price, and I’m going to win it.
Carl Icahn
My prediction is that in the next few years airlines with weak capital structures will have difficulty surviving.
Carl Icahn
Meyer’s making this a personal attack on me. He is not dealing with the issues.
Carl Icahn
I’m not going to run the airline. I’m going to hire the best talent I can find to run it…
Carl Icahn
[On being told ‘I don’t want to talk to you anymore unless you stop buying stock…’] I won’t stop buying stock, and I won’t talk to you.
Carl Icahn
[On ‘All you want is a fast buck. That’s all you’ve ever done in these corporate raids, go for the fast buck.’] If we are psychoanalyzing each other, why don’t you admit what you really care about is your job, and you are afraid I am going to take it away from you.
Carl Icahn
The neighborhood was black, Irish, Jewish, and those streets were mean.
Carl Icahn
[On his parents] She was a teacher from Brooklyn, afraid to venture out in the world. Always saying, ‘Don’t do this. Don’t do that. ‘ My father was a lawyer, but he never made any money. I was always driven to excel.
Carl Icahn
[On being told ‘Icahn, your problem is you have a terrible New York accent’] Whatta you talking about? Your accent’s worse than mine.
Carl Icahn
We have a lot of problems.
Carl Icahn
[In 2008] One of our major problems we have in this country is management and the ability to compete. We exceptions we have terrible management in this country.
Carl Icahn
The system is dysfunctional.
Carl Icahn
I can’t tell you how bad our boards are, with exceptions of course.
Carl Icahn
I sit on a lot of boards…I don’t have to watch Saturday Night Live anymore, I just sit at the board meetings. I will tell you it’s a sad commentary that we have an inability to compete. You can blame unions to some extent. But the real problem is that boards – there’s a symbiotic relationship between boards and CEOs today. And as a result there is no way to hold these guys accountable except [when] someone like myself comes along or some other person who is really well to challenge them. But you have to go through contortions. There is no corporate democracy.
Carl Icahn
The way a CEO is elected with exceptions is again a sad commentary
Carl Icahn
[On how CEOs get elected in corporate America in 2008] I call it Anti-Darwinian. I call it Anti survival of the fittest. When you see these guys who run these companies today. For the most part.
Carl Icahn
[On American CEOs in 2008] A likeable guy, maybe even a buffoon… Also a good political guy… He doesn’t make waves… he moves up the corporate ladder… doesn’t have many ideas… but this doesn’t help our corporations very much. Doesn’t help us be competitive, it’s the wrong people for this job today.
Carl Icahn
[On board meetings] The board doesn’t care… Red lines, green lines. There’s always something going up. No matter how bad the company is. Always lines.
Carl Icahn
[On American CEOs in 2008]He’s a survivor. As a survivor, he’s never going to ever have a number two guy who is smarter than him. He doesn’t want a guy that can challenge him because god forbid if somebody on the board should meet the number two guy.
Carl Icahn
[On the number two guy in an American company] He’s number two to the CEO. Sooner or later the CEO retires. The CEO puts him there because the CEO realizes this guys not a challenge because he’s a little dumber than the CEO. So now he becomes the CEO and now he finds his number two guy a little dumber than him. Sooner or later we’re going to be run by morons. By definition… And we are not far from that now.
Carl Icahn
You can be a guy that thinks for yourself and I think the world and our corporations are now waiting for that.
Carl Icahn
There are CEO’s who think for themselves and are really innovative. They go against the trend.
Carl Icahn
At least he would go against the trend, go against the board… That is what you should seek to be when you go out into the world. You should try to stand up against the trend.
Carl Icahn
Even thought it may cost you your job, may cost you your promotion. But in the end think for yourself. Be innovative. I’m not telling you to tell them what to do. You’ve got to be careful obviously about that. But if you have ideas go slam the table. Don’t worry about it. Come up with your own imagination. That’s what this country needs.
Carl Icahn
I like to go to the net. But not all the time, not all the time.
Carl Icahn
This is a takeover!
Carl Icahn
What I look for in these companies are hidden values, values that are not apparent. Analysts look at numbers. They don’t see these nonapparent values.
Carl Icahn
A lot of these companies are undervalued because of poor management. You can replace bad management, right. So that’s one big hidden value there.
Carl Icahn
Mediocre managements kill a lot of industries. Look at steel. It was such an establishment industry that nobody could ever touch them. But in this decade there are guys like me around, for this industry.
Carl Icahn
There’s no question I can lose, but I don’t think there’s anybody as good at this game as I am.
Carl Icahn
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