BEFORE CARL ICAHN was an activist investor, he was an arbitrageur. Although it was swashbuckling corporate raids during the 1980s that made him infamous, some of Mr Icahn’s earliest campaigns involved investing in closed-end funds, a type of investment company which often trades at a discount to the value of its assets. Closing this gap, perhaps by agitating for the fund to liquidate its holdings, yields a profit.
Mr Icahn’s own investment holding company, Icahn Enterprises, suffered no such discount. Until this week the firm had a market capitalisation of around $18bn, more than triple the reported net value of its assets. These include majority ownership of
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