Corporate Raider on the Ropes

As head of TWA, Carl Icahn confronts a strike and heavy losses

In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. --Oscar Wilde

For Carl Icahn, Wilde's words may be painfully true. When Icahn learned last August that he had won his bitter battle to take over Trans World Airlines, the New York financier and renowned corporate raider put on a pilot's cap and jacket and pranced around his office. "We've got ourselves an airline," he exulted.

But now TWA's new chairman and controlling stockholder has got nothing but trouble. As a strike by 6,000 flight attendants grounded nearly half of...

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