As those of you who read Opening Bell already know, Carl Icahn lost his bid for a seat on Motorola’s board yesterday. He’d previously written a letter to shareholders describing the current board as “passive and reactive” and detailed its failure to “steer management in the right direction.” Icahn failed to win the support of large funds, but was confident that he’d sent a “wake-up call.” One wonders if it was a RAZR phone set to ring at 6am? (Our’s never actually wakes us up because: 1. It’s not loud enough. 2. We don’t use it anymore because our fourth in a row broke).
Everyone here is a little (a lot) depressed that our favorite hybrid of Walter Matthau’s grumpiness and Philip Goldstein’s particular brand of testicularity didn’t get his way, but we’re trying to suppress our feelings of hopelessness and look on the bright side: Icahn will rise again and there’s going to be a Wall Street sequel starring Michael Douglas and (fingers crossed) Ben Affleck.
In honor of these upcoming events, we’ll be playing a round of our favorite game today: Icahn or Gekko. First person to get all correct wins a copy of Jack Welch’s Winning: The Answers signed by Johnathan Fess (the down and out broker who hangs out near our lobby begging for change).
Let’s play.
1. “I have been a professional investor for almost forty years. I seek out companies that I believe are undervalued by the market — I seek them out and I invest. ”
2. “The Carnegies, the Mellons, the man who built this industrial empire, made sure of it because it was their money at stake.”
3. “My significant stock ownership is many times that of the entire board.”
4. “Today management has no stake in the company.”
5. “Whether it’s 100 shares or 100 million — we invest in the hope and belief that the market will recognize that overlooked value and we’ll prosper.”
6. “In the last seven deals that I have been involved with there were 2.5m stockholders who have made a pre-tax profit of $12 billion.”
7. My activist investments over the past 2 years in companies [...] have seen their stock prices add billions in market value for all shareholders.
8. “Over the past 6 months, on this board’s watch, almost $20 billion of market value, of stockholder value, of your money, has disappeared.”
9. Altogether these guys sitting up there own a total of less than 3%…
10. “I am convinced that significant stockholder representation in the boardroom, even by a single director, is absolutely necessary at this troubled company.”
11. “You own [the company], the stockholders, and you are being royally screwed over by these bureaucrats with their steak lunches, golf and hunting trips, corporate jets, and golden parachutes!”
Bonus: Identify the speaker: “You motherfuckers aren’t going to get away with this.”
Icahn loses bid for Motorola board seat [BusinessWeek]
Icahn Appears to Fall Short at Motorola [NYT]
Icahn Fails to Win Motorola Board Seat [WSJ]
Even for a Billionaire Like Icahn, Life Isn’t Always a Breeze [Deal Journal]