Carl Icahn Comes Under Fire!

Legendary corporate raider and activist Carl Icahn found himself on the wrong side of a familiar battle this week when the short selling investment firm Hindenburg Research took aim at Icahn’s publicly traded holding company, alleging in a new report that Icahn Enterprises L.P. (IEP) is overstating the value of its private asset portfolio, and that its publicly traded stock units–85% of which Icahn owns–are “significantly overvalued.” Icahn’s fortune fell over 35%, from $18.3 billion on Monday afternoon to $12 billion as of Tuesday’s market close. 

Icahn Enterprises units tumbled 20% on Tuesday, shaving $3 billion in market value off Icahn’s fortune. Forbes then trimmed Icahn’s estimated net worth by another $3.6 billion, after it was revealed that Icahn had pledged over half of his IEP shares as collateral against unknown personal debts. 

Hindenburg is a short selling activist hedge fund run by Nate Anderson who is most famous for having released a video of Nikola’s electric truck prototype being towed up a hill in order to be pushed down to make a promotional video showing that the technology was fully operational. He claims that Icahn Enterprises has a Ponzi-like economic structure.