
Carl Icahn Takes $100M Stake in Lyft - foobarqux
http://www.wsj.com/articles/icahn-takes-100-million-stake-in-lyft-1431698445
======
dave_sullivan
I love how greenmail was rebranded to "activist investing". For those of you
who don't know, greenmail is basically going to a company and saying: "Hey, I
can convince your investors you suck and should be replaced, or you can pay me
to go away." That's also activist investing (but activists are good right?)

Yet to be fair, if some random guy can convince shareholders that the board
needs to be replaced, the board may be screwing up. Maybe those are the ones
most likely to pay someone to settle down.

~~~
maceo
It's actually a shame, because the term "activist investor" already had a
meaning.

It's what you would call nuns in the 80s who used proxy votes from pension
funds to push pro-people corporate policy. Or Harvard students in the 60s who
used proxies from their university endowment to agitate against corporations
profiting off the Vietnam War.

These days, that doesn't really exist anymore, but if you have to refer to it
its usually called "shareholder activism." Even then, most people who read
that assume that you're referring to greenmailing.

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josu
Is it possible to change the link to the Google one, so people don't find
themselves firewalled

[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Ficahn-
takes-100-million-stake-in-
lyft-1431698445&ei=6h9WVa_3MYSdsAXp04HABg&usg=AFQjCNGCBlXqHUlq_W5PG-2Gh84UEaBuww&sig2=xZX7DfeSPn34vIRxWiKzXQ)

~~~
philrapo
You could also pay for WSJ journalism. I'm surprised HN doesn't ever seem to
care about this issue.

~~~
josu
The two are not mutually exclusive, and I'm not even sure about the net effect
of linking to the non firewalled article. If I couldn't read any article from
the WSJ, I don't know how likely would it be that I'd sign up.

~~~
philrapo
fair point. Though if you never hit the firewall, you'd also probably never
sign up.

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lquist
I wonder how things will go with Icahn and Andreessen on the same board?

[http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-03-04/the-icahn-
vs...](http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-03-04/the-icahn-vs-dot-
andreessen-fight-a-blow-by-blow-explainer)

~~~
pacofvf
wait Ebay did spin-off paypal, Andreessen is still at EBay's board?

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EdwCoady
Icahn for sure just invested so he could be higher in a liq pref stack than
A16Z, so when things go south he can take away anything that A16Z could have
potentially recouped

~~~
foobarqux
There is a theory that Icahn is so rich and old that the money doesn't really
matter to him much anymore. Instead he gets the most value from investing his
money in ways that entertain him and sometimes that's by poking people he
doesn't like in the eye (Ackman, Andreessen).

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amyjess
Carl Icahn's shenanigans were part of what drove Marvel Comics to bankruptcy
in the mid-90s. I hope the same thing doesn't happen to Lyft.

~~~
scottm01
He ruined TWA airlines before that. Argue as you want about his success as a
businessman, he is bad bad news for employees, board members, and usually
(other) stockholders.

~~~
blueintegral
Motorola didn't end up so great because of him either.

~~~
jusben1369
Well remember he's only getting involved in risky projects because that's
where he can maximize upside. If your company is doing well to begin with he's
not there.

~~~
s73v3r
Not quite. Netflix was doing fine, and yet he kept trying to do his shit to
them so that he could chop the company up and sell it off, piece by piece. I'm
glad the Netflix board was successful in telling him to go fuck himself.

~~~
jusben1369
You're forgetting when he showed up at Netflix. It was after their disastrous
splitting of the DVD and streaming biz when they lost 1 million subscribers
and their stock price crashed.

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technofiend
As a Houston resident, we don't have any competition from Lyft anyway: they
exited the market last year.

What's interesting is whether Icahn is for or against autonomous cars
supplying the service. Obviously Uber/Google have one opinion, but Carl may
disagree since lyft has no autonomous car technology.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> but Carl may disagree since lyft has no autonomous car technology.

Which they could buy from Tesla or Delphi.

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hkmurakami
_> Lyft raised $530 million in a funding round earlier this year led by
Japanese e-commerce firm Rakuten. Mr. Icahn’s investment is the largest
portion of a $150 million extension to that round at the same valuation, the
company said_

 _> The money is an extension of a round of funding Lyft announced in March
that values the three-year-old company at $2.5 billion._

Doing back of the envelope math, Lyft is valued at $1.97B premoney. This
$680MM round gives the new investors 25.6% of the company. Uber raises even
bigger rounds while giving away much smaller fractions of the company each
time. Fascinating to see how market position dictates these terms in such
dramatic ways.

------
late2part
Carl Icahn is a contrarian. There's no question Uber is ahead, but Lyft has
material market share. I don't see this as an activist investor issue. In
Silicon Valley, people fight, and they get over it and move on. I'd be
surprised if Marc and Carl can't, and don't, do the same.

~~~
bababoosh
Icahn is a raider. He has no plan to grow Lyft. He wants to sell it to someone
and make money.

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therealarmen
I wonder how much of the company the Lyft founders still own. They have raised
over $1B at relatively (compared to Uber) low valuations.

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scottm01
What a great PR move for Uber!

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gcb0
sigh... and tomorrow lyft will adopt worse printing tactics than uber. that
guy makes uber founders look like madre Teresa

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pdeuchler
I find the Icahn hate very curious, and very similar to the outrage towards
Donald Sterling.

Both people have done questionable (I'm trying to be charitable) things that
have hit the public limelight, and have been ostracized and scapegoated by
their peers so that the public has a visible enemy they can attack instead of
realizing the problems are endemic to larger systems and groups of people.

Honestly, if you think Sterling/Icahn are even in the bottom 25% of their
equally immoral peers you're being duped. Continuing to vilify the symptoms of
larger diseases will only allow the disease to spread, and will solve nothing.
Maybe we should take a better look at the environments that create such
people?

It all rather reminds me of this Scarface scene:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzfX0T4LDD8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzfX0T4LDD8)

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univalent
Dangerous move in what could end up being a 'winner take all' market.

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bababoosh
Seems he already lost interest in eBay.

~~~
sseveran
That's cause he won.

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hownottowrite
Bye bye, Lyft

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metaphorm
this is Lyft committing suicide and donating its zombified corpse to Carl
Icahn.

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s73v3r
Why anyone would accept a single red cent from Carl Icahn boggles my mind.

~~~
hnnewguy
He's no different than anyone else playing the money game (just take a look at
his accusations towards Mr. Andreesen, who, I think, is a nice guy). He's just
better at it.

~~~
s73v3r
He's an ass who has a long track record of basically destroying businesses,
chopping them up, and selling them off. Fucking over anyone who isn't himself
in the process.

There are others who do this, too. He's just the worst at it.

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amit_jus
To HackerNews, Please don't include stories in your feed that go to paid site.

~~~
function_seven
Why not?

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et2o
N=1 but all of my friends use uber and none use Lyft. Not sure how long
they'll last.

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Apocryphon
Doesn't Uber need Lyft to be around so they won't get called a monopoly?

~~~
Moto7451
It's not illegal to have a monopoly. The real issue is if the company employs
illegally anticompetitive business practices.

[http://www.girardgibbs.com/antitrust-
monopoly/](http://www.girardgibbs.com/antitrust-monopoly/)

~~~
xasos
Especially because Uber pretty much created the market for ride sharing

