Carl Icahn Biography and Net Worth

As a leading shareholder activist, Carl Icahn’s efforts have unlocked billions of dollars of shareholder and bondholder value and have improved the competitiveness of American companies. He and his affiliated companies currently own businesses in a wide range of industries, including real estate, telecommunications, transportation, industrial services, oil refining and manufacturing. Companies in which he and his affiliates currently own majority positions include American Railcar, XO Communications, PSC Metals, Tropicana Entertainment, Viskase Companies, CVR Energy, WestPoint Home, Icahn Enterprises LP, and Federal-Mogul. He and his affiliated companies also own stakes in many other public companies. Icahn Enterprises LP, his flagship company, has acquired many of these positions.

Carl is a New York City native and grew up in Far Rockaway, Queens. After receiving a degree in philosophy from Princeton University in 1957, he attended medical school at New York University and then joined the Army. In 1961 Carl began his career on Wall Street. He has gone on to become one of the most well-known and influential investors in America. In 1968, he formed Icahn & Co., a securities firm that focused on arbitrage and options trading. In 1978, he began taking very substantial and sometimes controlling positions in individual companies. Over the years, these positions include RJR Nabisco, Texaco, Phillips Petroleum, Western Union, Gulf & Western, Viacom, Uniroyal, Dan River, Marshall Field, E-II (Culligan and Samsonite), American Can, USX, Marvel, Revlon, ImClone, Fairmont, Kerr-McGee, Time Warner, Yahoo!, Lions Gate, CIT, Motorola, Genzyme, Biogen, BEA Systems, Chesapeake Energy, El Paso, Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Regeneron, Mylan Labs, KT&G, Lawson Software, MedImmune, Dell, Herbalife, Navistar International, Transocean, Take-Two, Hain Celestial, Mentor Graphics, Netflix, Forest Laboratories, Apple and eBay.

His many charitable interests focus primarily on medicine, education and child welfare. In 2012, in recognition of Carl’s gift of $200 million, the Mount Sinai School of Medicine was renamed the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Institute of Genomics was renamed the Icahn Genomics Institute. The School of Medicine also established the Icahn Scholars Program to attract world-class physician-scientists. He also funded the Icahn Medical Institute Building at Mount Sinai Hospital and the Institute of Genomics, a genomics and multi-scale biology research program. Carl serves as a trustee on the boards of the School of Medicine and Mount Sinai Hospital.

In the realm of education, Carl established seven Icahn Charter Schools in The Bronx borough of New York City. The mission of the schools is based on the belief that all students deserve a rigorous academic program through which they will increase their capacity to learn. As a result, the students will graduate armed with the skills and knowledge to participate successfully in the most intense academic environments and will have a sense of personal and community responsibility. At Choate Rosemary Hall, a premiere boarding school located in Wallingford, Connecticut, where he previously served on the board of trustees, he endowed the Icahn Scholars Program, which has awarded a large number of scholarships to underprivileged students. He also funded the Carl C. Icahn Science Center and Choate Science Building, designed by I.M. Pei. At his alma mater, Princeton University, Carl sponsored a genomics laboratory, named the Carl C. Icahn Laboratory, for Princeton University’s Institute for Integrated Genomics. Carl is also a Charter Member of the Nassau Hall Society, which is composed of individuals who have given $5 million or more to Princeton University.

Through The Children’s Rescue Fund, an organization he established, Carl funded the construction of Icahn House, a 65-unit complex for homeless families in The Bronx. Icahn House was created to serve single pregnant women and single women with children. The Children’s Rescue Fund also operates other homeless shelters in New York City. Carl has also made significant donations to the Randall’s Island Sports Foundation, where he previously served as a trustee, for the construction of Icahn Stadium, a track and field stadium located on Randall’s Island. In addition, he has served as a trustee on the board of Lincoln Center.