Get a life Carl
What do you do when you’re a 76 year old billionaire and according to Forbes one of the richest human beings on the planet. Well if your Carl Icahn you make a living going around claiming that every company he’s invested in is run by an incompetent management team and that management team should be selling the company. Even when the company eventually gets sold and Mr. Icahn has added more millions or billions to his already huge net worth he’s not happy and often complains long and loud that this incompetent management team and their equally incompetent board of directors did not get a fair price.
This situation is made even more laughable as Mr. Icahn likes to think of himself as some sort of crusader protecting the rights of minority shareholders from incompetent management, when the only thing he truly cares about is adding to his own personal net worth. Diabetic Investor does not have a problem with Mr. Icahn and the wealth he has accumulated; this is what America is all about. However, his act is getting a little old and it’s time for him to shut up when it comes to Amylin (NASDAQ:AMLN).
Since Bloomberg News reported that Amylin turned down an unsolicited takeover bid from Bristol Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY), a bid that supposedly valued Amylin at $3.5 billion, shares of Amylin have risen over 50%. According to story that appears in today’s Wall Street Journal:
“Mr. Icahn, who owns a nearly 10% stake in Amylin, demanded Wednesday that Amylin’s board extend the window for shareholders to nominate new directors and make proposals at the upcoming annual meeting. He threatened legal action if Amylin didn’t grant his demand by 5 p.m. EDT Thursday.”
Mr. Icahn also noted that Amylin’s board of director breached their fiduciary responsibility by not bringing this supposed offer made by Bristol to the Amylin shareholders for a vote. He is also now demanding that the company be sold stating in a letter to Amylin’s board;” I and many industry analysts believe that the board of directors should pursue a sale of the company now. I believe there are more than a few potential acquirers for the company that could achieve significant synergies from an acquisition.”
Now we would not want to imply that Mr. Icahn, who obviously has a grasp for the obvious, has lost it but any idiot can see that the company is in play and yes there are several companies who would love to own Amylin. We also believe it is Mr. Icahn who is doing the greatest disservice here as he is claiming loudly that a real offer has been made when there is absolutely no validation that Bristol made a formal offer for Amylin, all we have is one unconfirmed report which for all we know could have been planted by Mr. Icahn.
Perhaps $3.5 billion is chump change to someone like Mr. Icahn who is worth over $14 billion, however to most people this is a fair amount of money and if a real offer had been made both Amylin and Bristol would have made this offer public as it clearly would be considered a material event. As we noted when this story first broke we suspect that Bristol and Amylin did have some informal discussions and that some numbers may have been thrown around, but we do not believe any formal offer was made and then rejected by the Amylin board. We further believe that it is quite possible that someone at Bristol mentioned this to Bloomberg and the rest as they like to say is history.
While there may be many things going on behind the scenes here all we can go on is the facts and as it stands today no one has made a formal offer for Amylin – yet. Like everyone else Diabetic Investor believes this day is coming and could get here very soon. However, when the formal announcement does come we do not believe it will be Bristol who ends up with Amylin as there are several other suitors and while Mr. Icahn won’t acknowledge it, given how things have transpired there could actually be a bidding war for Amylin which would drive the price even higher- imagine that.
No matter what happens there is one thing everyone can bank on, Mr. Icahn will not be happy and unfortunately we’ll see him on TV pontificating that Amylin shareholders somehow got screwed. He will then find some other company to pick on and this process will start all over again. This is how Mr. Icahn makes a living and he’s obviously very good at it. We just wish he would shut up, allow the process to run its course and be happy that he’s even wealthier than when this process started. Quite frankly his act is getting old and tiresome, time for some new material.
