Thread regarding Xerox Corp. layoffs

This guy is such a criminal and yet he is still allowed to do what he does

In 2014, Icahn joined the fray of Wall Street investors fighting over the dollar-store industry, which has been booming since the 2008 financial crisis “attracted tens of millions of new customers in search of bargain prices on household essentials.”[37] Competing with Wal-Mart locations across the country, dollar stores including Family Dollar and Dollar General make their profits by appealing to the country’s lowest-income residents and paying their employees poverty wages.[38]

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In June 2014, Carl Icahn bought a 9.4% stake in Family Dollar Stores and quickly set to pressuring CEO Levine to sell off the North Carolina-based company. Fortune’s recounting of the meeting between Icahn and Levine revealed Icahn’s hard-fisted tactics:

When Levine, 56, stepped out of the elevator into Icahn’s 11,000-square-foot duplex, he and fellow Family Dollar board member George Mahoney were escorted by a butler to the expansive balcony. There they found Icahn mixing a batch of martinis—Ketel One vodka, up with a lemon twist—for himself and two lieutenants. “Can I get you a drink?” Icahn asked Levine. “I’d love one,” replied Levine, “but I’ll say no, since I want to keep my wits about me.” Icahn didn’t miss a beat. “Not drinking isn’t going to help you,” he fired back, “so you might as well drink.”[39]

By July 2014 Dollar Tree shareholders voted to purchase Family Dollar for $8.5 billion ($74.50 per share). Typical of his short-term, raider style, Carl moved to dump his stocks before the ink was dry on the deal, netting $265.8 million in profit.[40]

While Icahn made his millions, employees in the dollar store industry continued to make poverty wages and were forced to work long hours of demanding physical labor without overtime pay.[41]

During Icahn’s tenure on the company’s board, Yahoo laid off 1,500 workers, or 10% of its workforce. CLICK TO TWEET

The merger also put 1,300 jobs at Family Dollar’s corporate headquarters in limbo as operations merged into a single corporate management structure.[42] As of earlier this year, employees at the company’s North Carolina headquarters were still waiting to see if they would lose their jobs after Family Dollar CEO Howard Levine resigned.[43]

FAMILY DOLLAR JOBS CUT: POTENTIALLY 1,300

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ATLANTIC CITY C-sinoS

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In February 2016, the Trump Taj Mahal c-sino, the last Atlantic City c-sino to bear the Trump name, was bought out of bankruptcy by none other than Carl Icahn.[44]

In fact, Icahn has worked with Trump in Atlantic City for years. Just six years ago he was the sole lender to Trump Entertainment, which proved to be an unnecessarily expensive deal for the future presidential candidate.

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Master dealmaker Trump was paying Icahn 12% interest, a rate much higher than the 6.2% he’d enjoyed pre-bankruptcy.[45] The high interest rate cost Trump an additional $70 million over four years.[46]

Since 2010, Icahn has extracted $350.5 million out of the Trump c-sinos in Atlantic City and sent that money back to Icahn Enterprises in New York, while forcing workers to take deep cuts.

The 1,100 workers at the Trump Taj Mahal have suffered under Icahn’s control. During his tenure, the c-sino has:

Implemented an overall 35% reduction in compensation for workers who average less than $12.50 per hour in wages.
Eliminated the health insurance plan that all of the rest of the c-sinos use and which workers have sacrificed wage increases to maintain for the last decade.
Eliminated more than $3 million in pension contributions.[47]
Paid employees less, including eliminating a paid lunch break (loss of about $1,600 annually)
Decreased job security for its workers by permitting unlimited subcontracting for Food and Beverage service.
Increased employees’ workloads. For example, housekeepers now clean 16 rooms a day, up from 14 rooms a day.
Since 2010, Icahn took $350.5 million out of the Trump c-sinos in AC while forcing workers to take deep cuts. CLICK TO TWEET

Icahn threatened to close the c-sino, and cut 3,000 jobs in the process,[48] if the workers’ union did not capitulate to his drastic cuts. Naturally Icahn attempted to redirect the scrutiny onto the union saying that he was “baffled by how they don’t see that their destructive efforts may well result in 3,000 less jobs.”[49]

The union appealed the terms of the Taj Mahal’s 2014 bankruptcy, arguing that cuts to health insurance benefits and pension fund payments were illegal due to their previous collective bargaining agreements. The case went the way to the Supreme Court, which recently declined to hear it.[50]

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TAJ MAHAL JOBS CUT: 3,000 JOBS THREATENED

TAJ MAHAL EMPLOYEES’ HEALTH COVERAGE AND PENSIONS CUT: 1,100

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AIG

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Icahn’s 3% stake in insurance giant AIG has also drawn attention recently. And, as usual, where Icahn goes, layoffs follow.

In January 2016, in response to pressure from Icahn to shrink the company and increase profits, AIG announced a massive plan to layoff employees and cut their benefits.

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The plan included laying-off 400 senior level employees and closing all but 4 of its U.S. financial network offices, which has led to at least 380 more layoffs.[51]

By the end of 2016, 6,300 jobs will be shipped overseas,[52] to “lower-cost centers” including Manila, Philippines and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.[53] AIG also froze their pension plan to save $100 million annually.

In Jan 2016, Icahn's pressure to increase profit led AIG to a massive layoff plan & benefit cuts. CLICK TO TWEET

AMERICAN JOBS ELIMINATED (LAYOFFS AND JOBS SHIPPED OVERSEAS) AT AIG UNDER ICAHN’S WATCH: 7,080

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APPLE

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Icahn led a successful campaign to increase shareholder dividends and buybacks from Apple.

In making these demands Icahn positions himself as a hero to the shareholder class, but Apple’s horded cash could be used more effectively to benefit the company’s underpaid workers around the world or, as pointed out in the Wall Street Journal, to move jobs back to the United States:

Mr. Moas, founder of Miami-based Standpoint Research, says one reason Apple has so much cash is that it underpays its labor in Asia to build its products. He recently made news for “blacklisting” Apple in his research report—making the controversial suggestion that more of Apple’s cash go to the workers who make its products.

Apple has already announced a three-year plan to return $100 billion to shareholders through stock buybacks and dividends. If Apple coughed up, say, $10 billion to pay workers, who knows, it might even be able to afford to create jobs in the U.S.

Nobody would even notice the money was missing.

Except Mr. Icahn. He thinks he deserves it. He’s smarter.[54]

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ICAHN’S DIRTY ENERGY INVESTMENTS

In recent years, Icahn has bet big on fossil fuels, investing heavily in energy and railway companies that have benefited from the shale oil and gas boom.[55] According to the most recent SEC filings, Icahn owns almost 14% of Cheniere Energy,[56] a Houston, Texas based oil and gas company that has been an aggressive leader in pushing for increased export of liquid natural gas, including converting liquid natural gas import facilities to liquid natural gas export facilities.[57]

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He also owns more than 10% of Chesapeake Energy,[58] one of the earliest Marcellus Shale drillers that helped start the fracking boom. In Pennsylvania, Texas, and other parts of the country where the company operates, landowners have alleged Chesapeake has cheated them out of royalty money.[59] Chesapeake’s biggest recent settlement covered over 400 lawsuits representing 13,000 plaintiffs in East Texas. They settled for $52.4 million to avoid going to trial.[60]

Icahn also owns almost 9% of Freeport McMoran,[61] a major oil and gas driller in Los Angeles. South L.A. residents have been protesting the effects of drilling in residential areas.[62]

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Over several decades, Carl Icahn has come to epitomize the “greed is good” mentality of Wall Street. His actions have led to the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs and lost benefits for tens of thousands of other employees, on his way to accumulating a net worth just shy of $20billion

Icahn first earned his reputation as a corporate raider in the 1980s, when he targeted Trans World Airlines (TWA).

In 1985, he bought more than 20% of the airline’s stock, essentially buying himself the position of Chairman at the company. He pushed TWA to make a series of controversial decisions that his critics said made him hundreds of millions of dollars but ultimately resulted in TWA declaring bankruptcy multiple times, being bought out by American Airlines, and laying off and cutting the pension of thousands of pilots and flight attendants.

Ichan profited & pushed TWA to multiple TWA bankruptcies, layoffs & pension cuts. CLICK TO TWEET

Indeed, Larry Summers – no populist – described Icahn’s TWA profits as “essentially a transfer of wealth from existing flight attendants…to Icahn.”[8]

After investing in TWA in 1985, Icahn took the company private in 1988. He made $469 million on the deal, but TWA emerged saddled with $540 million in debt.[9] 4,000 flight attendants lost their jobs.[10] At the time, the head of the flight attendants’ union argued that Icahn used s-xist logic when dealing with her 85% female union when he said flight attendants were not “breadwinners” like mechanics and could therefore afford to take deeper cuts.[11]

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Icahn’s subsequent strategic decisions raised eyebrows about whether he prioritized the health of the company and its workers – or whether he put a higher priority on his own bank account and profits.

In 1991, he sold TWA’s lucrative London routes to American Airlines, for what many said was an undervalued $445 million.[12]

A year later, TWA filed for bankruptcy. The company emerged from bankruptcy with creditors owning 55% of the company. One of those creditors? Carl Icahn, who owned $190 million of the company’s debt.[13]

Amid growing criticism of his leadership, Icahn resigned as Chairman in 1993, but soon became impatient for his $190 million to be repaid. To appease him, TWA came up with a deal called “the Karabu ticket agreement,” which allowed Icahn to buy any ticket that connected through St. Louis for 55 cents on the dollar and resell them at a discount on his website, Lowestfare.com. The deal allowed Icahn to bleed TWA dry by making it compete against itself.[14]

In 2001, TWA announced its third bankruptcy and that it was accepting a purchase offer from American Airlines. With the merger, came massive job cuts for TWA workers. Some employees were laid off and others were permanently furloughed.[15]

Two years after the merger was announced, American Airlines said only 10,000 of the 20,000 TWA employees at the time of the merger remained at American.[16] The employees who kept their jobs faced other challenges, as their seniority at TWA was not recognized, which adversely affected their salaries and benefits.[17]

Around the same time, Icahn announced that he would terminate two TWA pension plans covering 36,500 participants, including 15,000 active workers.[18] In 1991, Congress had passed a law forcing him to take personal responsibility for the airline’s underfunded pensions in order to disincentivize him “from selling [TWA’s] assets, shutting the carrier down, and walking away.”[19]

Icahn announced he would terminate two TWA pension plans covering 36.5k, including 15k active workers. CLICK TO TWEET

In 2001, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation assumed responsibility for the pensions, essentially shifting the pension responsibilities from Icahn to a public entity.

During his raid of TWA, Icahn earned a reputation as a callous opponent of the airline’s pilots, flight attendants, and ground crews. He infamously told a a TWA worker “If you want a friend, get a dog,” a line later adopted by Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street.[20]

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TWA JOBS DESTROYED UNDER ICAHN’S WATCH: 22,075 [21]

TWA WORKERS AFFECTED BY PENSION BENEFIT TERMINATIONS UNDER ICAHN’S WATCH: 36,500 [22]

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TIME WARNER

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In 2005, Icahn built a stake in Time Warner Inc. and began a battle with CEO Richard Parsons with the goals of putting directors on the board, splitting the company up into four different companies, and executing a $20 billion share buyback.[23]

Icahn called out Time Warner’s leadership for the company’s “egregious expenses and perks.”[24]

In the media, Icahn focused on the company’s fleet of corporate airplanes and the expensive Time Warner Center headquarters. But behind closed doors, reducing the company’s “bloated cost structure” meant layoffs.

Soon after Icahn launched his campaign against Time Warner, massive layoffs began. CLICK TO TWEET

Soon after Icahn launched his campaign against Time Warner, massive layoffs began.

Warner Brothers Entertainment Division fired 250 to 300 employees at its Burbank studio, amounting to at least 5% of the 4,500 Warner employees there.[25] 100 people in the studio’s international operation division were also laid off. ¬Simultaneously, Time Warner’s AOL division laid off more than 700 employees.[26]

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Icahn was ultimately unsuccessful in splitting up Time Warner into 4 divisions, but in early 2006 the company and Icahn reached a truce that included several concessions to Icahn: the company instituted a $20 billion share buyback, appointed two new independent directors to the board in consultation with Icahn, and agreed to take an extra $500 million out of its cost base.[27]