Carl Icahn Joined Up the Hedge Fund Party for Fannie and Freddie
The Wall Street wolf Carl Icahn has joined William Ackman, an American entrepreneur and investor with extensive experience in the hedge fund industry, in bet on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Icahn
took a $50 million position in Fannie Mae and Feddie Mac in March by
buying common stock from Bruce Berkowitz’s Fairholme Funds. Icahn bought
6.8 million shares of Fannie Mae for $4.03 per share and 5.7 million
shares of Freddie Mac for $4.04 per share, according to a court document
that was reported by The Wall Street Journal and CNBC. Berkowtiz, who
bet early and big on Fannie and Freddie, not only gets to book a nice
gain on the shares he sold to Icahn, but he potentially also gets an
ally in his effort to make outsized gains from his continued large
position in both the common and preferred shares of the GSEs.
Disclosure
of Icahn’s bet on one of the most politically explosive and
controversial investments going comes in the aftermath of reports about a
federal insider-trading probe that is looking at Icahn, golfer Phil
Mickelson, and the prominent sports better William Walters. All three
individuals have denied any wrong doing and the facts surrounding the
federal investigation on the surface suggest it could go nowhere. Icahn
did not know about the federal insider trading investigation, which is
looking at trading in Clorox in 2011, when he bought shares of Fannie
Mae and Freddie Mac from Berkowitz.
Source: Forbes
