Said : Carl Icahn, an American business magnate, investor, activist shareholder, and philanthropist.
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn said this while announcing that he has completely liquidated his entire stake in Apple. He is reported to be owning nearly 46 million AAPL shares at the end of 2015. At today’s stock close of $94.81 the total sale value comes to around $4.5 billion.
However, appearing on CNBC news, he acknowledged that Apple was a “great company” and CEO Tim Cook was “doing a great job.” The main reason for his liquidating the Apple stock, according to him, was because of his worries about Apple’s growth in China. This was clear from his statement that if China “was basically steadied,” he would buy back into Apple.
His take on China as a whole was “You worry a little bit — and maybe more than a little — about China’s attitude,” Icahn said, later adding that China’s government could “come in and make it very difficult for Apple to sell there… you can do pretty much what you want there.”
Carl is a New York City native and grew up in Far Rockaway, Queens. After receiving a degree in philosophy from Princeton University in 1957, he attended medical school at New York University and then joined the Army. In 1961 Carl began his career on Wall Street. He has gone on to become one of the most well-known and influential investors in America. In 1968, he formed Icahn & Co., a securities firm that focused on arbitrage and options trading. In 1978, he began taking very substantial and sometimes controlling positions in individual companies. Over the years, these positions include RJR Nabisco, Texaco, Phillips Petroleum, Western Union, Gulf & Western, Viacom, Uniroyal, Dan River, Marshall Field, E-II (Culligan and Samsonite), American Can, USX, Marvel, Revlon, ImClone, Fairmont, Kerr-McGee, Time Warner, Yahoo!, Lions Gate, CIT, Motorola, Genzyme, Biogen, BEA Systems, Chesapeake Energy, El Paso, Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Regeneron, Mylan Labs, KT&G, Lawson Software, MedImmune, Dell, Herbalife, Navistar International, Transocean, Take-Two, Hain Celestial, Mentor Graphics, Netflix, Forest Laboratories, Apple and eBay.
Carl Icahn sells Apple stake over China concerns
You can watch his interview on CNBC here.