Icahn, Carl C(elian) (1936- )

US financier, entrepreneur, and airline executive. One of the most notorious corporate ‘raiders’ of the 1980s, he enriched himself and his partners by his takeovers, while, so his defenders claimed, making money for ordinary stockholders. In 1985 he bought Transworld Airlines (TWA), and as its chief executive officer, brought it back from near bankruptcy; but in 1992, despite investing US$100 million of his own money, he was forced to relinquish control of TWA to its employees.

Born in Queens, New York, the son of a lawyer who wanted to be an opera singer, he took a philosophy degree from Princeton in 1957, left medical school after three years, and learned the broker's trade on Wall Street before establishing his own brokerage firm, Icahn & Co. in 1968. He engaged in what was called ‘greenmail’; threatening to take over corporations such as Marshall Field and Phillips Petroleum, he would sell his stocks at the end gaining a sizeable profit.