A few things about Carl Icahn

I mentioned the investor, Carl Icahn on this post (http://doctorjytsai.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-story-of-erbitux-medicine-or.html); there are a few things connected to him, which may be worth your while to read.  Unlike Warren Buffett, who is a value and long term investor, Icahn is a corporate raider, a shareholder activist; completely different style.  The truth is that there is more than one way to a successful investment.

Icahn comes from Far Rockaway, Queens, NYC, so he is Jewish.  He graduated from Far Rockaway High School, which has produced three Nobel laureates (Baruch Blumberg, Richard Feynman and Burton Richter, about whom I have talked in my blog at various times).  By the way, Joyce Brothers was also from Far Rockaway. 

After donating nearly $200 million to Mount Sinai Medical school; the school has since been renamed Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.  Icahn did spend two years attending the NYU Medical School, pressed by his mother and dropped out because he “hated it.”  He said his mother would have been proud as his name is now associated with a medical school.  He didn’t want to be just graduated from a medical school; he wanted a medical school named after him.

If I were in the investment or financial service I would pay very close attention to what Icahn has been up to.  His outspokenness comes from the strength as he would accumulate the sizable shares of the company of his target before he became an activist; to have things done his way.  Presently he is trying to have eBay spin off PayPal.  He has since shut up after Apple announced that it has bought back $14 billion of its own stocks in recent downturn of the market; he initially wanted Apple to have $160 billion buy back.  Last year he was also in the fight to get Dell into private ownership.