Carl Celian Icahn ˈaɪkɑːn born February 16 1936 is an American activist shareholder He is the founder and controlling shareholder of Icahn Enterprises a public company and diversified conglomerate holding company based in New York City Icahn takes large stakes in companies that he believes will appreciate via changes to corporate policy and he then pressures management to make changes that he believes will benefit shareholders He was one of the first activist shareholders and is credited with making that investment strategy mainstream for hedge funds In the 1980s Icahn developed a reputation as a corporate raider after profiting from the hostile takeover and asset stripping of Trans World Airlines Description above from the Wikipedia article Carl Icahn licensed under CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia