Carl Icahn Should Be Sailing Into the Sunset. Instead, He’s Scrambling to Save His Empire.

livemint.com:

personal loans that had been tied to the stock price, but they sank further after IEP reported disappointing second-quarter earnings earlier this month and cut its dividend in half. Icahn, who has called Hindenburg’s report “misleading and self-serving," issued a rare mea culpa in a letter accompanying the results.

He said he had strayed from the style of investing that made him famous in favor of a bet against the market that backfired, and vowed to refocus on activism. (In trademark Icahn fashion, he also spent much of the letter berating public company CEOs and boards, comparing them to feudalistic rulers and their advisers to mercenaries.) Icahn appears upbeat about IEP’s future, touting that an investor who’d bought shares in 2000 and reinvested dividends would have averaged a 13% annual return through July.

Though both IEP’s short and long positions lost money in the second quarter, he said the company appeared to turn a corner in July, when the value of its stock investments had a net increase of $500 million. And his famous sense of humor is undiminished.

When IEP shares opened down more than 30% the morning of its earnings release, Bill Ackman, another billionaire investor and frequent Icahn foe, tweeted, “On Wall Street, if you want a friend, buy a [dog emoji]." One of Icahn’s oft-repeated quips, it appeared to be a callback to an earlier Ackman tweet that said Icahn has made many enemies during his career and doesn’t seem to have any real friends. In response to his younger rival’s comment at the time, the martini-drinking Icahn told The Wall Street Journal, “At least most of my friends are dead.

What’s his excuse?" But the hole Icahn is in is no joke. His plan to dig himself out of it by refocusing on