Best recognized as a major shareholder in the diversified holding company, Icahn Enterprises, Carl Icahn is an American businessman with an estimated net worth of $20.1 billion in June 2019.

Carl Icahn's professional career started in 1961 as a stock broker on Wall Street. Seven years later, Icahn & Co. was founded. The company focuses on option trading and risk arbitrage. Subsequently, he began acquiring controlling positions in companies like TWA, Phillips Petroleum, RJR Nabisco, Texaco, Gulf & Western, Viacom, Motorola, Herbalife, Western Union, Dan River, Uniroyal, Fairmont Hotels, Marshall Field's, American Can, Revlon, Kerr-McGee, Marvel Comics, USX, E-II (Culligan and Samsonite), Federal-Mogul, Blockbuster, Imclone,  and Time Warner. He has also purchased stocks in Mylan Laboratories and King Pharmaceuticals. Later on, he sold KT&G (Korea Tobacco & Ginseng)  for a huge amount of profit.

In 2007, he and his affiliates became owners of majority positions in many firms like American Railcar Industries, ACF Industries, Philip Services, XO Communications, and Icahn Enterprises which was then known as American Real Estate Partners. Carl Icahn is known to be one of the major critics of Yahoo!'s former CEO Jerry Yang, which led to the latter's resignation.