After years of being dormant, the feud between activist investors Bill Ackman and Carl Icahn is fully lit like a volcano in Mexico.
This week, the Pershing Square founder decided to take another victory lap around the smoldering ruins of Carl Icahn's Icahn Enterprises (IEP) hedge fund after the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York opened an investigation into the firm's corporate governance, capitalization, securities offerings, dividends, valuation, marketing materials, due diligence and other disclosures.
"Icahn's favorite Wall Street saying: 'If you want a friend, get a dog.' Over his storied career, Icahn has made many enemies. I don't know that he has any real friends. He could use one here," Ackman said in a long tweet this week.
Carl Icahn may be busy dealing with the investigation and the fall out from the short report from Hindenburg Research -- a drop in IEP's stock price following the report's release cost the hedge fund $10 billion in market capitalization -- but he isn't too busy to respond to his old foe.
"Taking advice from Ackman concerning short selling is like taking advice from Napoleon or the German General Staff on how to invade Russia," Icahn said.
Icahn Enterprises shares were down another 13% Thursday afternoon. The stock has plummeted nearly 60% in the month of May all based on the fallout of the Hindenburg Research report.
Hindenburg's report said that the dividends IEP pays out are "mathematically unsustainable" due to the fact that $1.5 billion in cash dividends have been paid since 2014 despite negative free cash flow of $4.9 billion during that period.
"In short, Icahn has been using money from new investors to pay out dividends to old investors," the note stated.
