"The Wolf of Wall Street": a movie, a book, two madmen

Jiuzhou Fangwen

Foreword

This article is neither a book review nor a movie review. But we must start with a movie and a book. They have the same name: "The Wolf of Wall Street", but they are about two different people.

Let’s talk about this movie first. “The Wolf of Wall Street” filmed by Hollywood in 2013: starring Leonardo DiCaprio, it received five Oscar nominations but won none. This movie combines entertainment and education. It tells the story of a financial wizard named Jordan Belford. He first got involved in serious Wall Street exchanges, and later found a way to make money from junk stocks. He started his business in Long Island, New York, and managed a bunch of stocks. The gangsters on the street were trained to become a new generation of telemarketing masters who are full of knowledge and talk about things. He also made a lot of money by manipulating the stock market by selling junk stocks. It was not until the last chance that the Swiss bank account he used for money laundering was exposed, that he was arrested by the anti-money laundering department.

This movie is full of overnight get-rich-quick, extravagant and extravagant life, and a penetrating description of the outrageous extravagance of the nouveau riche. Of course, there must also be the justice of the IRS and the FBI. They were not tempted by money, but worked tirelessly and persistently, and finally brought to justice the cunning speculator Jordan Belford, who was known as the "Wolf of Wall Street" for tax evasion and tax evasion, and promoted the patriotic theme of capitalism.

This movie is also a movie that is completely inappropriate for teenagers. Xiao Lizi and dozens of beauties would go into battle if they didn't agree, and sometimes they would take some drugs. Be sure not to watch it with children! Be sure to study critically! Be sure to watch the original version! ! ! Be sure to watch the original version! ! ! Be sure to watch the original version! ! ! Otherwise, it means you haven’t watched it. Spoilers for the film stop here.

Let’s talk about this book. The book is called "The Wolf of Wall Street: The Biography of Financial King Carl Icahn" (written by Mark Stevens), and a Chinese translation was published in 2017. It tells the story of how Carl Icahn, also a financial wizard, over the past few decades defeated one opponent after another through the financial game of hostile takeovers, and became the real "Wolf of Wall Street" who frightened the managers of listed companies. . The book is quite thick. If you are too lazy to read it yourself, there is a good free read-aloud version on Himalaya. You can easily find it by searching for "The Wolf of Wall Street Ran Ran".

The text begins:

This sentence comes from the mouth of Carl Icahn, known as the "Wolf of Wall Street". As a failed individual in human society, I personally agree. These two original sins occur to me frequently in rotation. Sometimes they even occur at the same time.

This person said, who is Carl Icahn? Isn't it the Jordan Belford played by DiCaprio in "The Wolf of Wall Street"?

Let’s first talk about the real person Jordan Belford who was crowned the title of “Wolf of Wall Street” by the 2013 Hollywood movie “The Wolf of Wall Street”. In the movie, Jordan Belford is a god-like existence. In reality, this man is indeed very eloquent. It is said that in his sales skills training class, not to mention the students, when he was speaking, if the tables and chairs in the venue were not fixed to the floor, he would encourage them to stand up and follow. Gone.

He scattered large amounts of money to federal tax and investigative agents, drove his yacht wildly on the sea and finally sank it in anger. There were hundreds of people P, and he threw a party that destroyed Las Vegas. The plot on the entire hotel floor really happened. These plots do not need to be dramatized at all. They are written directly as Hollywood scripts.

When DiCaprio (Leonardo DiCaprio) plays the role of The Wolf of Wall Street, he is simply playing his true character. The prototype may be his own greed, cunning, lust, and extraordinary intelligence. All performed vividly. He himself also won an Oscar nomination for the second time with this film.

Looking at this legendary "Wolf of Wall Street", everyone must think that he is as rich as the enemy, right? In fact, after being punished by the SEC, he made a living by doing sales training everywhere and teaching success stories and his own stories. It can be said that he is doing well and is now worth about US$100 million.

What is the concept of 100 million US dollars? One hundred million dollars is a lot of money anywhere. As a failed individual in human society, $100 million is simply an astronomical figure to me. If I suddenly had 100 million US dollars, I would wake up laughing in my dreams. However, let alone Wall Street, even in Manhattan, Jordan Belford is probably not the richest person on the street where he lives. In the Chinese dynasty, one cannot even be ranked among the richest people.

Let’s talk about the real “Wolf of Wall Street” who was deprived of the title of “Wolf of Wall Street”: Carl Icahn. At the peak of his life, Carl's net worth exceeded 24 billion U.S. dollars. After his net worth shrank in 2021, he will still have about 18 billion U.S. dollars. Let's put it this way, if he is a "Wolf of Wall Street", Jordan Belford is at best a large wolf pen, not even a wolf cub.

Let’s call this Mr. Carl Icahn the “Old Wolf of Wall Street.” Let’s lift up Jordan Belford and call him “The Wolf Cub of Wall Street.” This is easier to distinguish.

Compared to Jordan Belford, Carl Icahn can be said to be from the previous generation. He is nearly 30 years older than Jordan Belford. Both were born in Queens, New York. Karl was born in February 1936 into a Jewish family. The Jewish innate business savvy and the temptation of New York, which was full of gold dollars at that time, made him full of desire for wealth since he was a child.

In his youth, Carl Icahn first studied philosophy at the famous Princeton University, and then transferred to New York University to study medicine at the suggestion of his mother. In the first class of medical school, he heard the teacher talk about dentistry. The era of making money was over, so he left school and joined the army without hesitation. He quickly became a poker player in the military camp, and a few months later he chose to retire and work as a stockbroker on Wall Street.

On Wall Street, Carl Icahn was like a whale who found the ocean that truly belonged to him. Many years later, he still recalled with excitement the circumstances when he first arrived at the stock exchange. He described it this way: "Like a magician who turns stone into gold, miracles happened overnight. Strength, ambition and passion merged brilliantly in astronomical figures." He quickly earned thousands of dollars. The amount of money was also an astronomical figure in 1961. He immediately went and bought a Ford 500 convertible. But soon, all the money he earned was lost as quickly as in a casino.

The young Icahn realized that he was lacking in professional knowledge, and he began to learn basic courses such as accounting and securities analysis from scratch with amazing perseverance. By 1968, Icahn used his savings from working in the stock market to buy a seat on the stock exchange and established a small securities company called Icahn & Co. Throughout the 1970s, Icahn accumulated his knowledge and experience in obscurity.

In 1980, Icahn moved his office to Manhattan, the world's financial center. After a long period of accumulation, he had a certain amount of funds and his ambitions also expanded. After lying dormant for many years, the Wolf of Wall Street saw the opportunity and took action.

A long-established global automotive parts manufacturing supplier headquartered in Michigan became the wolf's first prey. After careful investigation, Icahn discovered that years of historical problems had put the company on the verge of bankruptcy. But the company also has a lot of potential. Icahn, who thought he had a rare commodity, immediately raised tens of millions of dollars from various sources and resolutely acquired the company. After the acquisition, he carried out drastic restructuring and rectification of it. Facts have proved that Icahn's vision is unique and precise.

After this series of outrageous operations, which coincided with Reagan's economic stimulus policy, the company miraculously came back to life. When Icahn sold it a few years later, the company's market value had increased 20 times!

After winning the first battle, Icahn could not hold back. In 1985, Icahn became interested in a large oil company. Through his in-depth and detailed research, he felt that the company's value was seriously undervalued based on the oil price at the time. Icahn quietly bought shares of the company on a massive scale. When everyone thought he was going to announce his takeover of the company, he suddenly gave up the acquisition, sold all his stocks for cash, and made a huge profit. This battle ended with Icahn's resounding victory.

At this time, Icahn was already growing up. He began to attack on all sides. The battle that really made him famous in 1985 was the hostile takeover of Trans World Airlines. By this time Icahn had acquired a reputation as a corporate predator. As the name suggests, Icahn's magic weapon is hostile takeovers: his usual approach is to acquire a large number of shares of a company, then join its board of directors, split the company, sell marginal assets, replace incompetent managers, and buy back the company. shares to reduce the number of shares outstanding and so on. In many cases, he would force the company to redeem his stocks, make a fortune and then walk away.

Icahn himself certainly does not consider himself a predator. He calls himself a knight-errant like Robin Hood. What he despises the most are those sanctimonious senior company managers with high salaries. He is their natural enemy. He believes that these people only care about their own wages and bonuses, and never really care about the efficiency of the company and the rights and interests of shareholders. The ultimate goal of every war launched by Icahn is profit, but the ones who are really trembling are the well-dressed and well-paid managers in the company. "Fortune" magazine still recognized Icahn's self-evaluation and called Icahn the protector of shareholders' rights: "Whether you believe it or not, in reality Icahn is a complex and versatile person-he is proficient in all kinds of ways to make money. "Probably makes more money for shareholders than any other speculator on the planet"

That's true, especially for shareholders of Icahn Investments. No matter what the final fate of Icahn's prey is, every investor who originally invested in Icahn's company has received a super high return on their investment, and the compound rate of return over decades has far exceeded Buffett's.

This book "The Wolf of Wall Street: The Biography of Carl Icahn, the King of Finance" (Mark Stevens), translated into Chinese in 2017, introduces Carl Icahn in detail, from birth to His growth experience and his brilliant financial sniper battles one after another can be called a rare Wall Street financial textbook. This book details his important series of battles before 2010, from the initial acquisition battle of an auto parts company, to the acquisition battle of Trans World Airlines for which he became famous, as well as the acquisition of oil companies, etc.

Icahn has been involved in the war for decades, and the companies involved in his business wars include:

Reynolds-Nabisco (RJR Nabisco), TWA (Trans World Airlines) ,Texaco,Phillips Petroleum,Western Union,Gulf & Western,Marshall Field,Celcom(water filter) Brand, Culligan), Samsonite (luggage brand, Samsonite), American Can, USX, Marvel Comics, Revlon, Imclone, Federal-Mogul (Auto parts manufacturer, Federal-Mogul), Fairmont Hotels (Fairmont Hotels), Kerr-McGee Group (petrochemical company, Kerr-McGee) and Time Warner (Time Warner).

After 2010, Motorola, Netflix, DEll, Ebay, Paypal, Apple and Xerox were added to this long list.

When this biography was completed, this old wolf of Wall Street was already in his 70s. However, he showed no sign of stopping. After finishing this book, the old man did several earth-shaking things.

From 2008 to 2015, Motorola, headquartered in the suburbs of Chicago, went from being an old communications giant and the absolute leader in mobile phones to being split up in 2011 and later sold to Lenovo and then to Lenovo. It was given to Google, and in the end it was barely alive, barely surviving, and even the land and house were almost sold. This giant that was once the representative of American technology has fallen, and behind this rapid decline has always been the figure of the Wolf of Wall Street. From being split up to being sold, it was all planned by this old wolf.

In 2014, eBay became his new “prey”. Icahn bought a large amount of eBay stock, then recommended two of his own people to the board of directors, began to interfere heavily in the company's management, and finally promoted the split of eBay and PayPal. In a sense, Paypal founder Elon Mask was able to achieve the success of Tesla and SpaceX today. The spin-off of eBay and PayPal that the Wolf of Wall Street pushed for also has a direct or indirect causal relationship.

In 2016, while at war with Ebay, Icahn also declared war on Apple. In his eyes, Apple's value was severely undervalued, so he used his nearly 5 million Apple shares as a bargaining chip to repeatedly urge management to repurchase $50 billion in shares. He directly challenged Apple's management, believing that their idle cash of up to 150 billion US dollars was a complete waste. Although the buyback plan was not ultimately implemented, on the day he disclosed the news of his large-scale investment in Apple, Apple's stock price violently rose by nearly 20%.

The calendar has turned to 2021. Today, the 85-year-old Icahn is still young and will not let go of any prey. When the epidemic was raging and the whole world was selling oil and crude oil futures fell to a historical low of -$40 per barrel, he once again successfully bought the bottom and ordered 1 million to 2 million barrels of crude oil at negative prices. On June 1, 2021, when this article was completed, crude oil prices had climbed all the way back to their highest point in the past two years. The old wolf made another huge sum of money.

Carl’s latest prey is said to be Xerox, the veteran office equipment leader that has been on the Fortune 500 list for 57 years.

There is absolutely no unknown person on Icahn’s long list of prey. It can be said that all of them are well-known star companies in the American industry. But once they are targeted by Icahn, few can escape unscathed.

First, buy enough shares of the target company aggressively, and then use high-pressure means to "seize power" from the management, thereby achieving the most important goal - to push up the stock price, make huge profits, and then quickly withdraw. This is Icahn. The "routine" used to conquer Wall Street for decades. He is already too familiar with this trick. In more than two dozen battles, large and small, Icahn won the vast majority. What Icahn admires most is Napoleon. He also enjoys the feeling of making his opponents collapse or surrender after battle after battle just like Napoleon conquered a city. Bloodthirsty is the nature of wolves. At this point, the nickname "Wolf of Wall Street" couldn't be more appropriate.

Unlike Napoleon, Icahn never encountered Waterloo in his life. Bill Ackman, CEO of hedge fund Pershing Square Asset Management, was one of the few losers, costing him only $9 million. Even so, many people are already eager to call Bill Ackman the new generation of "Wolf of Wall Street."

In fact, Wall Street is the core of the Jinyuan Empire. In this jungle, there are many monsters that dominate, look fierce, and eat people without spitting out their bones. There have been countless “Wolves of Wall Street” like Carl Icahn, Jordan Belfort, and even Bill Ackman, and there will be more in the future.

For people like Carl Icahn and Jordan Belfort, the pursuit of money is no longer a simple "addiction." Many people clearly have the opportunity to wash their hands and enjoy the success after becoming successful. However, at a certain stage, for such people, money has long surpassed the quantitative concept of purchasing power and power. It has risen to become a kind of belief, a way to spend a lifetime of energy. the goal pursued.

As Karl said:

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