Tony Robbins: How Carl Icahn, Wall Street's Activist Investor, Protects Shareholders



Tony Robbins talks about interviewing Carl Icahn and picking the brain of the renowned investor advocate. Read more at BigThink.com: http://goo.gl/O8uR Follow Big Think here: YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigthink Transcript: Well one of my favorites is Carl Icahn. Time Magazine called him the master of the universe on the cover of Time Magazine. And I’ll tell you when I first went to meet Carl most people know him as a pretty intense guy. I walked in that day with my video crews you guys have here and he says I want all these guys to leave. I said what? He said I don’t want a video crew. I said but you agreed to it this morning. He said I don’t care. I don’t want it. I said okay, well how about if my audio team comes in. And he said no audio team. I said well what am I supposed to do here? He goes bring a pen and paper. You’ve got ten minutes. And, you know, I scheduled my meetings for 45 minutes and to go deep they usually go three hours. But to his credit, you know, he’s had so many people attack him that he needs to know what you’re really about. When he saw I was sincerely about teaching what he knows to individual investors and really empowering them he became very passionate and he gave me almost three hours. He endorsed the book. He’s been extraordinary ever since and has actually become a friend. So Carl is a teddy bear underneath and he really does care. But his results are unquestioned. As I said earlier how about a 1600 percent return if you’d invested with him over the last 13 years versus 75 percent for the S&P. As I said since 1968 a 30 percent compounded return if you’d been with him during that time, outstripping even Warren Buffet. But what’s interesting about him is he really believes that the challenge in stock and in business is that it’s an old boys club. That’s his view. And that what happens is the people that get elected are the people the most liked and the board does what’s best for the board. And that, you know, there’s so much that isn’t really looking out for the individual investor so that’s what made him an activist and he’s very intense and he goes in and he buys enough stock to have an impact and shakes their world. Lets them know that they’re going to be fired unless, you know, they make some significant changes. And the results of what he’s produced though are incredible. A lot of people say he’s just got in and out so that’s why I put in the book an actual track record. You see he stays with most of these investments for a very long time. There’s very few that he goes in and out. In fact a Harvard law professor, I put the study in the book shows that of over 2,000 activist interventions that have been done the vast majority of them have made the company much more profitable for almost a decade afterwards, not just for a few months or a few years. Because what happens is management is what maximizes resources in a company. And when management gets unhungry or comfortable or maybe supporting a certain strategy or approach you’re not going to get the most out of it just like the rest of us as human beings. And Carl is one of those guys that comes and shakes that stuff up. And when he comes you know things are going. The day that I go into see him he just recently had done a Tweet saying that Apple was undervalued. And within two hours of that Tweet Apple stock went up 17 billion with a B, billion dollars in value by one Tweet. And people said oh, he did that to manipulate the market. He didn’t manipulate the market. He stayed in. He’s still in. He kept on buying more and more of the stock even as the price went up because he thought the company’s really worth it. And in Apple’s case he was pushing them to try and release a certain amount of money to shareholders in the form of dividends. I think he asked for 150 billion. And I said well did you really think you were going to get that? He said no, but I figured if I pushed 150 billion maybe I’d get 70, 80 or 90 and I think he got 90 billion if I remember the right numbers. The numbers are so huge it’s mind boggling. [TRANSCRIPT TRUNCATED] Directed/Produced by Jonathan Fowler, Elizabeth Rodd, and Dillon Fitton

Comments

  1. most of you need to stop complaining. all investors want to make as much profit as possible legally. that is capitalism and capitalism is good for us.
  2. for a public speaker he has the most annoying voice...2mins is all I can handle,
  3. Can't help but laugh at all you people talking shit about robbins and carl. I bet you wish with every fibre of your being that you could be even 10% as successful as they are. People are too negative and in turn fuck themselves over. I am green when it comes to finances and business. But I have 100 customers to date. Profit of about 200k a year. And I didn't get here by talking smack. I listen to many people and pick and pull all the best parts of what they have to say. Instead of talking shit and putting yourself down in the process. Make something of yourself.
  4. This guy must be the whitest black guy in existance
  5. Carl is the man
  6. a talking machine...feed time in and contant noise comes out
  7. Carl Icahn only cares about himself.. he's nothing more than a con willing to put American companies out of business or selling it to a foreign company to make a quick buck. If he can't accomplish those he'll extort a company's management to buy him out.
  8. which book is he referring to?
  9. Is he really number 1 in his industry? well i think he is.. wooho!!!
  10. Carl Icahn has just done this to Twitter.
  11. He is promoting ideas that guys should buy stocks of a company and hijack its board of directors to make the company do whatever they want. They are bullies who are only interested on getting more money. They are determined to do anything. Greedy bastards.
  12. Robbins knows himself (its this asshole that has pushed the meme so loudly) that EVEN IF YOU ARE FULL OF SHIT (honestly this is how its taught in to universities) TALK CONFIDENTLY and the majority of the idiots you are addressing will buy in. There is also research which shows there is ZERO correlation between the loudest most confident person in the room and the best ideas - often that quiet mouse in the corner is the one with the best ideas.

    Money for corporate raids dried up in the 80s BECAUSE THEY WERE DOING MORE HARM THAN GOOD. This was a reaction to the the post WW2 economic boom (the golden age of capitalism). After 3 decades of letting assholes run things, coached by assholes like Robbins we ended with the destruction of the entire global economy, groth has HALVED, income for the 80% is now STAGNANT or declining, democracy is gutted, inequality the worst in human history, demand at the bottom is anemic while the corporations sit on 2.75 TRILLION they dont know what to do with while BUYING POLITICIANS to futher screw the majority and further lowed their taxes. Global warming is being largely ignored, no plans for peak oil, the singularity or the over exploitation of nature (Robbins makes HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS and NATURE can support a human with a life style that costs around 6,600 dollars per year - the man couldn't be more despicably greedy if he tried).
  13. This is assuming that what's best for the shareholder is best for the company, which is often not the case.  
  14. His name is spelled Carl Icahn not Ichan. Good video though.
  15. Fuck you Big Think for promoting these self-enriching charlatans to the masses. 
  16. Anthony Robbins used to be homeless and worked as a janitor. It's amazing how he came from nothing and now worth almost $500 million.
  17. Investors: People who want to make a lot of money without really working for it.
  18. This is sickness.
  19. *Icahn
  20. Apparently Tony Robbins is unaware of what Carl Ichan wanted to do in Atlantic City.


Additional Information:

Visibility: 19503

Duration: 5m 46s

Rating: 391