TIP104: Billionaire Carl Icahn

W/ Mark Stevens

16 September 2016

One of the most misunderstood celebrity investors in the world is Billionaire Carl Icahn. Luckily for our audience, our guest Mark Stevens was one of the few people to forge a relationship with the unique and un-empathetic investor.  Mark started off as a tennis competitor to Carl, but overtime he was brought into the billionaire’s inner-circle and got to know his family.

During our interview with Mark, he discusses some of the key aspects of his detailed biography on Icahn titled, King Icahn.  You’ll learn about Carl’s intellectual aptitude, his interest in philosophy and Chess, and his crazy antics for negotiation.  For anyone interested in the corporate raider mentality, Mark’s book is a must read.

One of the things Preston and Stig liked most about the book was the detailed analysis of provided for each deal Icahn constructed through the years.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN:

  • What “greenmail” is and how Icahn basically got paid for not taking over companies.
  • How to conduct an activist approach to investing.
  • Why Carl Icahn always wins in a negotiation.
  • If Carl Icahn is truly a bear in the current market conditions.

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CONNECT WITH PRESTON

CONNECT WITH STIG

CONNECT WITH MARK

TRANSCRIPT

Disclaimer: The transcript that follows has been generated using artificial intelligence. We strive to be as accurate as possible, but minor errors and slightly off timestamps may be present due to platform differences.

Preston Pysh  1:03  

Hey, how’s everybody doing out there? This is Preston Pysh. I’m your host for The Investor’s Podcast. And as usual, I’m accompanied by my co-host, Stig Brodersen out in Seoul, South Korea. 

Today, we got a really, really fun guest for you, because we got Mark Stevens with us. And Mark is the guy that literally wrote the book on Carl Icahn. His [Carl] net worth is somewhere around $16 to $17 billion here in 2016. And Mark wrote the book called, “King Icahn: The Biography of a Renegade Capitalist”. And Stig and I have both read this book. We were actually going to record a discussion about some of the stuff that we learned from this book. And luckily, we were able to actually land Mark on our show, and he is here today with us to talk about all of his adventures in writing this, and studying and learning all about Carl Icahn. So, Mark, with that said, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day. You’ve been running your own business. I just want to throw this out there. He’s the founder and CEO of MSCO. It’s a marketing company. He’s been running it for almost 21 years now. 

Mark, my initial question after reading this and for anybody that hasn’t had the opportunity to read your book, the amount of research that you had done to write at such a detailed level about all these different transactions, all these different deals that Carl did through the years, I mean, I can’t even imagine the amount of research that you did to write this book. I’m reading some of the stuff and the detail that you put into it was just mind blowing. So my first question is this, why Carl Icahn? Why did you put all this time and effort into learning about Carl? What intrigued you to do this?

Mark Stevens  2:47  

It was mostly because we live in the same town at Bedford, New York, which is a small town, an hour from *inaudible* Manhattan, but a world apart. This is sort of more horses in town than there are people. Few stores. George Soros lived probably half a mile away from Carl. And then there’s a lot of movie stars. So anyway, I kind of knew about Carl by reading about him but never paid much attention to it. I saw him in town one day. And given that most of our, in Bedford at any given time is 12 people. I went up to him and said, “are you Carl Icahn?”. He said, “yeah”. We just started chit chatting. Turned out, to make a long story short, we turned out to be both tennis players. And we made a date to play tennis. 

Preston Pysh  3:32  

No way. 

Mark Stevens  3:33  

Yeah. So this is part of Carl’s oddities,. He had this 220 acre property with a gorgeous English stone mansion. But he didn’t live in it. He lived in a sort of upper middle class house that he built on the 220 acres. I’ll tell you why in a moment. But he had a gorgeous tennis facility that he built for himself. I mean, like a beautiful club, like any club that you will go to for a membership. You would say this is really a top rated club. And you know the English living rooms off the court. And we’ve started playing twice a week. I made it at midnight. We’d played until 2 A.M., and then we’d have dinner in his house. 

Now, a couple of things about Carl’s personality which comes across as, is that he bought the house from  movie star, Jennifer O’Neill who starred in “Summer of ’42”. But he didn’t live *inaudible* it. Carl water *inaudible* live in his house. Oh, he’s worth $1.2 billion at that time. It costs about $5 to $6 million. There’s no way I would spend *inaudible*. He lived in this nice house, upper middle class house. Never locked the doors. Nothing. And you know, that’s the way Carl is. And at the tennis facility, which was beautiful. When he went in to take shower after we played, the bars of soap were a little TWA bars of soap because he owned TWA. So these little three bars of soap will not go to waste. So we met that way. And I got fascinated in just by being his friend. 

Preston Pysh  5:05  

Wow. So here’s the thing that I’m so amazed with, Mark is the fact that I didn’t get that out of your book. Like, you’d never let on that you had any type of personal relationship with him to be quite honest with you. The detail of the deals and the way that you had interviewed close friends, people who were nemeses to Carl. That’s what you really portrayed in the book, which was really kind of fun to hear all those different perspectives, which I think the truth really kind of comes out when you hit all those different perspectives. So I didn’t even know that. 

Mark Stevens  5:38  

I said to Carl, one day I’m gonna write a book about you. And he said, you’re just not going to do that, right? I will sue your butt off. One of the house, one of the business, your kids will be in the street, there’d be nothing to eat. I’m telling you, I’m gonna put 50 lawyers against you. You’re not writing a book. I said, “Carl, read my lips. I’m writing a book about you, right?”. So, Carl’s style is to call you at four o’clock in the morning. And then again, at 3 A.M. the next day. He basically never sleeps. He’s always threatening me while I’m playing tennis. Simultaneously we’re friends talking, went on a vacation to Palm Beach with my wife, and his girlfriend who’s his wife now. And he was bringing hell down on me. When he found out, I just went out and started talking to the M&A guys at the big M&A firms. And he started getting word back. This guy Stevens is in my office and he wants to meet with you. And don’t forget, call him plenty of enemies. So they will talk.

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