“‘Icahn’s favorite Wall Street saying: “If you want a friend, get a dog.” Over his storied career, Icahn has made many enemies. I don’t know that he has any real friends. He could use one here.’”
— Bill Ackman, Pershing Square Capital Management
That was billionaire hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman, founder and chief executive of Pershing Square Capital Management, resurrecting his longstanding feud with billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn in a tweet Wednesday. Ackman was referencing the fallout from the recent report by short-selling firm Hindenburg Research that accused Icahn’s publicly traded investment vehicle, Icahn Enterprise Partners LP
IEP,
-19.70%,
of inflating asset values and causing his company to trade at a large premium. The report from May 2 has cost IEP about $10.9 billion in lost market cap, after the stock tumbled another 21% on Thursday.
For more: Carl Icahn rebuts short seller Hindenburg Research’s report. It’s already cost his company $6 billion in market cap. Ackman said he is neither long or short IEP but merely “watching from a distance.” But he seemed to agree with Hindenburg’s founder and CEO, Nate Anderson, who questioned margin loans extended to Icahn using his roughly 85% stake in IEP as collateral. Icahn has not disclosed the terms of those loans although he recently told the Financial Times that he used the money to make additional investments outside of his publicly traded vehicle. “Over the years I have made a great deal of money with money,” he was quoted as having said. “I like to have a war chest, and doing that gave me more of a war chest.”
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