Icahn

Billionaire investor Carl C. Icahn dropped his plans to propose an opposing slate of directors for the board of Gaithersburg-based MedImmune Inc., noting the biotechnology company's decision to seek a buyer. Icahn, in an e-mail statement yesterday, said he urged MedImmune "several weeks ago" to put the company up for sale. He also said at the time that he intended to nominate directors at the 2007 annual meeting "whose intention it would be to accomplish this." In pulling back yesterday, Icahn said he reserved the right to pursue the proxy fight if MedImmune, Maryland's largest biotech company in sales and employment, fails to complete a sale.

Carl Icahn may be best known as a 1980s corporate raider, but the billionaire knows a lucrative 1990s trend when he sees it.Lowestfare.com, an Icahn-owned travel agency on the Internet, plans an initial public stock offering to tap investors' voracious appetite for e-commerce stocks. But Lowestfare.com is not your ordinary travel planner -- electronic or otherwise. Lowestfare.com at the moment is mostly a means of helping Icahn peddle roughly $600 million of tickets on struggling Trans World Airlines, which Icahn ran and helped finance between 1985 and 1993.

NEW YORK -- Financier Carl Icahn said yesterday that he had sold his 19.93 million shares of RJR Nabisco Holding Corp. for $732.4 million, all but ending his 17-month attempt to force the food and tobacco company to split in two.Icahn said investor "euphoria" over talks to settle legal claims against the tobacco industry dashed his second bid to win control of the maker of Camel cigarettes and Oreo cookies. He made about $134.5 million from the sale, not including dividends.It isn't Icahn's first abrupt exit.

NEW YORK -- Investor Carl Icahn is expected to offer $450 million of junk bonds next week, about half of which will be used for future investments in speculative deals, sources say.The deal, similar in structure to what is known as a "blind pool," or "blind trust," is seen by fund managers as a sign of the return of a type of investing that was popular in the 1980s but has since gone out of style."

Marriott court hearing postponedBethesda-based Marriott Corp. and its bondholders agreed yesterday to postpone a scheduling conference that had been set in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. The meeting was rescheduled for Jan. 29.Several bondholders' groups have sued Marriott, accusing the hotel-and-service company of securities fraud for failing to disclose a restructuring plan, announced Oct. 5, when it issued bonds last spring.PaineWebber fined in stock casePaineWebber Inc. was ordered to pay nearly $9.69 million yesterday by a three-member arbitration panel of the National Association of Securities Dealers for misleading the 38-year-old nephew of the late Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.The nephew, John Robson, claimed damages for an errant trading strategy involving 403,300 Wal-Mart shares designed by a PaineWebber broker.

MOUNT KISCO, N.Y. -- Financier Carl Icahn made a $1.18 billion cash buyout offer yesterday for E-II Holdings Inc., the maker of Samsonite luggage, McGregor menswear and Culligan water treatment equipment.Mr. Icahn, the former owner of Trans World Airlines Inc., said he has the financing and is willing to put up a $50 million nonrefundable deposit.Mr. Icahn previously has been snubbed in his attempt to buy the company by financing a competing reorganization plan. E-II has been operating under Chapter 11 protection since July 1992.

Icahn expected to quit TWAAfter making the final installment of a $200 million loan to Trans World Airlines, Carl Icahn is expected to resign as early as today from TWA, the only big-name company the takeover strategist ever bought.Mr. Icahn's loan, his promise to help fund TWA's pension plans and his resignation are part of an agreement that will allow the airline to complete its sale to creditors and employees.4 Japanese brokerages probedFederal stock market regulators are reportedly preparing legal action against the U.S. subsidiaries of Japan's four largest brokerage houses, according to a published report yesterday.

WASHINGTON -- "Greenmail" -- a favorite and lucrative tactic of corporate raiders -- survived its first legal challenge in the Supreme Court yesterday.Without explanation, the court voted to leave intact a federal appeals court ruling that had blocked a claim that greenmail is a form of "white collar extortion" outlawed by the federal extortion law.The appeals court had said that a target of greenmail by corporate raider Carl C. Icahn -- Viacom International Inc. -- had suffered no damages, and thus a lawsuit seeking a tripled monetary award against him could not go forward.

TWA cleared to leave bankruptcyA judge approved an agreement between Trans World Airlines Chairman Carl Icahn and one of TWA's biggest creditors, clearing the way for the airline to emerge from bankruptcy.The settlement yesterday with the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., the federal agency that backs workers' pensions, ends a dispute over under-funded pension plans that had been the last major obstacle to TWA's reorganization. As part of the reorganization, ownership of TWA will shift from Mr. Icahn to the airline's creditors and unions.

Trans World Airlines Chairman Carl C. Icahn and the airline's creditors have made major concessions to make the airline's pension fund viable and to guarantee jobs for its pilots, according to people involved in the talks.They said the concessions were an effort to reach an agreement on a reorganization plan that would enable the airline to emerge from bankruptcy.The people, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Mr. Icahn had offered to guarantee personally a significant part of the fund if it should run into trouble.

WCI Communities Inc., the homebuilder whose chairman is billionaire corporate raider Carl Icahn, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after failing to obtain new financing and losing 90 percent of its value in the past year. Chief Executive Officer Jerry Starkey will leave and Chief Operating Officer David Fry, 48, will take over as interim CEO, Bonita Springs, Fla.-based WCI said in a statement yesterday. WCI, which has proposed building a controversial 23-story tower in Columbia, is in talks to receive $100 million in debtor-in-possession financing from several lenders, the statement said.

SAN FRANCISCO - Billionaire investor Carl C. Icahn is weighing whether to use the stake he has amassed in Yahoo Inc. to launch a proxy fight to unseat some of the Internet pioneer's board members after Microsoft Corp.'s failed bid for the company, two people familiar with the matter said yesterday. Icahn has purchased about 50 million Yahoo shares, roughly 4 percent of the company, since Microsoft pulled its $47.5 billion offer for Yahoo, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were confidential.

WILMINGTON, Del. -- With billionaire financier Carl C. Icahn teaming up with Lear Corp.'s top executives to take the company private, it should have been a slam dunk. But in a demonstration of shareholder democracy that stretched over five months, other investors blocked the sale. The results of the vote, announced yesterday afternoon at a special shareholders meeting, leave some questions about the future of the company and its largest shareholder: Will the stock rise or fall? Will Icahn try again to take over the company?

NEW YORK -- Carl C. Icahn, the billionaire investor seeking a spot on Motorola Inc.'s board, has won the support of ClearBridge Advisors, gaining one of the phone maker's biggest shareholders as an ally. ClearBridge, which owns 54 million Motorola shares, plans to vote for Icahn at Monday's annual meeting, according to a statement by the firm yesterday. ClearBridge, owned by Legg Mason Inc. of Baltimore, is the largest shareholder to back Icahn so far. ClearBridge's support may help Icahn put more pressure on Motorola Chief Executive Officer Edward N. Zander, at the helm as the world's second-biggest phone maker posted its first sales decline in almost four years amid price cuts.

The game at MedImmune was over on Valentine's Day, we can now see, when Carl C. Icahn disclosed that he had bought stock in the Gaithersburg biotech company worth $89.8 million. He didn't threaten a proxy fight against MedImmune until March, he later told The Washington Post, but he hardly needed to. Mere news that Icahn has taken a stake in your company delivers as message as obvious as a severed horse's head: Place all or part of your company up for sale, or prepare for war. On Monday, MedImmune agreed to sell itself to AstraZeneca for twice its stock market value from a few months earlier.

Billionaire investor Carl C. Icahn dropped his plans to propose an opposing slate of directors for the board of Gaithersburg-based MedImmune Inc., noting the biotechnology company's decision to seek a buyer. Icahn, in an e-mail statement yesterday, said he urged MedImmune "several weeks ago" to put the company up for sale. He also said at the time that he intended to nominate directors at the 2007 annual meeting "whose intention it would be to accomplish this." In pulling back yesterday, Icahn said he reserved the right to pursue the proxy fight if MedImmune, Maryland's largest biotech company in sales and employment, fails to complete a sale.

Billionaire investor Carl C. Icahn has bought 2.8 million shares of MedImmune Inc. stock, a 1.2 percent stake that's large enough to fuel speculation that Maryland's largest biotech company is headed for a shake-up. New York investment group Matrix Asset Advisors, which owns about 1.7 million shares of MedImmune, or about 0.7 percent of the company, has been pushing for the Gaithersburg-based company to be sold. In a letter sent to MedImmune's board of directors Tuesday - the third of its kind - Matrix President David A. Katz said he was concerned shareholders were suffering "because of management's inability to deliver on its guidance and proffered expectations."

NEW YORK -- ImClone Systems Inc., a biotechnology company best known for the Martha Stewart trading scandal, abandoned its search for a buyer yesterday and offered investor Carl C. Icahn three board seats. Its shares dropped the most in more than nine months. Multiple bidders failed to meet ImClone's price in an auction that began in January, interim Chief Executive Officer Joseph L. Fischer said. In May, ImClone relaxed its "poison pill" provision to give Icahn the opportunity to increase his stake from the current 10 percent and added a director he supported.

When hedge fund investor Eddie Lampert decided to take over operating control of Sears Holdings on Thursday, he decided to take charge himself rather than leave the job to professional managers. It was a decision fraught with risk: a financial investor with virtually no management experience taking control of one of the nation's largest retailers. This sort of coup by bankroll happens rarely in business, and for good reason: It doesn't work. Cable titan Ted Turner became so frustrated with the play of his Atlanta Braves that he donned a baseball uniform and managed from the dugout until Major League Baseball forced him to stop.

Accusing Time Warner Inc. of moving too slowly to improve its sluggish share price, billionaire investor Carl C. Icahn yesterday urged the world's largest entertainment company to separate its cable business from its entertainment properties and repurchase $20 billion worth of its stock. But many investors questioned whether a sale or spinoff of the company's cable business would improve the entertainment giant's value. While they welcome a bigger stock buyback, analysts said, it's not the best time to sell or spin off cable systems that have been trading at historic lows because of concerns about the heated rivalry with phone and satellite competitors.