Billionaire Investor Carl Icahn Sells Entire Stake In Apple (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn said he has sold his entire stake in Apple, citing the risk of China's influence on the stock. The report comes after Apple announced its first earnings decline in more than a decade, where Apple's revenue is dropping 26% year-over-year. Icahn is concerned with the barriers to trade that China's authoritarian regime might put in place. Icahn said he wasn't concerned with interference so much with the country's "relationship" with Apple. "The thing that I'm worried about here in China doesn't affect the whole market. I'm not talking about China's economic status right now. I'm talking about, could the thing with Apple escalate a little bit? And if that does, what does that mean to Apple's profits during the interim?" Icahn acquired a stake in the company almost three years ago, calling the investment a "no brainer." What caused him to sell his 45.8 million Apple shares (priced at $240 a share) was China's economic slowdown and worries about how China could become more prohibitive in doing business.

Comments

Stop calling him an activist investor

[Sycraft-fu]

That's a name he and his PR people have made up because it sounds cool. He's a corporate raider: He buys successful companies on a heavily leveraged position, transfers all the debt to them, sells off their assets, and then leaves them to die. He tried to do it with Dell, but failed thankfully.

Re:Stop calling him an activist investor

[EvilSS]

This. 10000000 times this. Guy is a world class asshat. He probably dumped his shares as a final tantrum because Apple wouldn't bend to his bullying and he finally ran into a company that, even will all his billions, could tell him to go pound sand.