Carl Icahn's Time Warner efforts find a powerful ally in "white-shoe" investment bank Lazard. Wall Street M&A advisors have been hesitant to support efforts by Icahn and his hedge fund brethren in their share-holder activist efforts for fear of alienating fee-paying corporate clients (investment banking, legal and registration fees on the Time Warner/AOL deal were approximately $300 million). By hiring Lazard, which is led by banking legend Bruce Wasserstein (1,2,3), Icahn is surely raising the intensity of his campaign against Time Warner management. Icahn has been successful in previous shareholder activist campaigns, most notably against Blockbuster (1,2), and talks a pretty mean game. Wall Street will be watching this closely - hedge fund activism is becoming a very real fear for company management/directors: Circuit City/Highfields Capital, Wendy's/Pershing, Bally's Fitness/Pardus Capital & Liberation Investment Group, Axciom/ValueAct Capital, MSC Software/ValueAct Capital (reg. required), Beazer Homes/Tontine Capital (second story on page) and more.
posted on Nov 30, 2005 - View this thread