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I recorded an interview yesterday afternoon with WFAE 90.7 (“Charlotte’s NPR News Source”) about the strategy behind Carl Icahn’s exit from Family Dollar Stores Inc. (FDO:NYSE) and Deep Value: Why Activist Investors and Other Contrarians Battle for Control of Losing Corporations (hardcover or Kindle, 240 pages, Wiley Finance). Here is Icahn Exits, Family Dollar Considers Rival Bids:

The future of Family Dollar is uncertain—it’s in the midst of a bidding war as its board of directors decides whether to sell the company to Dollar Tree or Dollar General. But this much is certain: The billionaire investor who helped spur this pending ownership change is now cashing in.

Rewind to June: Family Dollar’s earnings are sluggish, stock is stagnant, and competitors are pulling away. Carl Icahn thunders in; the 78-year-old activist investor buys more than $150 million of the company’s stock and options, demands a change in leadership, and threatens to attempt a hostile takeover.

Fast forward to present: Family Dollar is trading at an all-time high, $80 per share, and fielding offers from its two chief rivals. And Icahn is out.

“This is classic Carl Icahn—[find a] deeply undervalued company with an ugly looking business that he can buy and create an event. And that event was the sale,” says Tobias Carlisle, managing director of Eyquem Investment Management and the author of “Deep Value: Why Activist Investors and Other Contrarians Battle for Control of Losing Corporations.”

Read the rest of Icahn Exits, Family Dollar Considers Rival Bids here.

Buy Deep Value: Why Activist Investors and Other Contrarians Battle for Control of Losing Corporations (hardcover or Kindle, 240 pages, Wiley Finance) from Wiley Finance, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble.

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