All Carl Icahn Wants For Christmas Is Pep Boys

The Icahn family can expect stockings full of shock absorbers this year.

Author:: Thornton McEnery
Updated:: Jan 14, 2019
Original:: Dec 21, 2015

What does the bombastic, ornery billionaire that has everything get for himself at the holidays?

A car-parts and servicing company of course!

Mr. Icahn, the billionaire activist investor, offered to acquire Pep Boys — formally known as Pep Boys – Manny, Moe & Jack — for $16.50 a share in cash, or $919 million on a fully diluted basis, on Friday, according to a filing Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The bid surpassed Bridgestone’s previous proposal to acquire Pep Boys for $15.50 a share in cash. Mr. Icahn’s offer added $56 million in value to the transaction and was seen as superior by Pep Boys’ board.

But what does Uncle Carl want with all those car-parts? Is this the edge that Carl and Lyft have been looking for?

Mr. Icahn, who holds about an 11 percent stake in Pep Boys, was unhappy with Bridgestone’s original October offer to acquire Pep Boys in an all-cash transaction for $15.00 a share. So the billionaire investor made a competing bid earlier this month at $15.50 a share in cash, which was then matched by Bridgestone on Dec. 11.

Nope, it's just another game of Icahn keep-away. Now, that's the holiday spirit.

Carl Icahn Raises Offer for Pep Boys [Dealbook]

Ten years ago, Carl Icahn hired his son Brett to be an analyst at Icahn Enterprises and the kid didn't fuck anything up so he got to keep his job. Two year ago, Carl gave Brett and another employee, David Schechter, $300 million to invest under the "Sargon portfolio," and the guys returned 96 percent (before fees) through June. Last month, Carl tossed the duo an additional $3 billion and a contract that expires in 2016, at which time Papa Icahn will either officially Brett a worthy successor or offer to serve as a reference for his next gig. Under a 46-page legal agreement filed with federal regulators last month, Brett Icahn and Schechter will get to invest their boss’s capital in companies with stock market values between $750 million and $10 billion. The deal may free the elder Icahn, who still has final say over many aspects of the portfolio, to focus on larger targets for shareholder activism. Brett, who turns 33 this month, along with Schechter has been running $300 million for his father, who owns more than 90 percent of Icahn Enterprises LP, a holding company with $24 billion in assets including activist investing partnerships as well as the Tropicana casinos, an oil refiner and an auto-parts maker. The arrangement expires after Carl turns 80 in 2016, giving Brett the chance to both prove his mettle as a successor and develop a track record to start his own hedge fund. After hiring Brett as an investment analyst a decade ago, Icahn allocated the $300 million to his son and Schechter in April 2010 to invest in loans and securities of companies with less than $2 billion in equity value. Their investments, internally dubbed the Sargon portfolio, generated a gross cumulative gain of 96 percent by the end of June, according to a July 27 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission...“These two guys doubled our money over the last two years,” the elder Icahn said in an interview. “You can’t complain about that.” Carl Icahn Hands Son Brett $3 Billion To Prove His Mettle [Bloomberg]

Icahn Miami

Or die. Whichever comes first.

CarlIcahnLockerRoom

This makes you wonder if Carl Icahn ever considered the option of STFU.

Getty Images

Their most recent agreement has expired and Icahn the Elder drives a hard bargain.

They're making the friendship bracelets now.

When Mark Hughs founded a multi-level marketing company called Herbalife in 1980, he probably thought it had the power to do a lot of things. Help people lose weight. Makes others rich. Shake up the diet industry. What he mostly likely did not expect, however, was that his li'l company that could would reignite a feud between two billionaires that would devolve into a flurry of press releases quibbling over who was dying to be friends with whom, shouting matches on live TV, and, we predict, someone telling someone else he has a right mind to "Rip the eyes out of your head and piss into your dead skull! You messed with the wrong hedge fund manager!"