Carl Icahn moving hedge fund to Miami,
whether his workers like it or not
By Josh Kosman
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn is moving to Miami next year — and employees of his hedge fund who don’t like it will be let go without any severance, The Post has learned.
Icahn quietly informed the staff of his publicly traded Icahn Enterprises that he’ll be shuttering its offices in New York City and White Plains on March 31, and immediately re-opening in Florida’s Magic City the next day.
“My employees have always been very important to the company, so I’d like to invite you all to join me in Miami,” he wrote in a May 17 letter obtained by The Post.
To sweeten the deal, Icahn promised that everyone who makes the move will be paid at least as much in salary and bonus next year as they earned in 2018, and that anyone who gets fired before March 31, 2023, would get an “immediate payment” equal to that amount.
He also offered a $50,000 “relocation benefit,” that will be “payable in April 2020 once you have established your permanent residence in Florida,” according to a follow-up memo.
But for those who don’t relocate to the Sunshine State, “the Company will not contest your unemployment claim,” the memo says.
“The current maximum weekly Unemployment benefit rate is $450, which you can receive for a total of 26 weeks,” it adds. That works out to a total of $11,700.
By comparison, the average hedge-fund portfolio manager was expected to take home about $1.4 million in salary and bonus last year, according to a November report by Institutional Investor.
Icahn — who has a net worth of $17.6 billion, according to Forbes— employs approximately 75 people, including about 20 professionals, according to a source familiar with his operation.
It’s unclear how many accepted his take-or-leave-it offer by the July 1 deadline, or whether it was extended to the entire staff.
In his letter, Icahn — a philanthropist whose name adorns Mt. Sinai’s School of Medicine and Icahn Stadium on Randall’s Island — said heading south was “not an easy decision to make.”
“After spending my entire career in New York, while I certainly do not wish to retire, I’ve decided that at this point in my life I’d like to enjoy a warmer climate and a more casual pace year-round,” he wrote.
Icahn, 83, didn’t offer any other explanation, but affluent New Yorkers have been fleeing to Floridato save money since President Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Job Acts limited the federal deduction for state and local taxes to $10,000.
Icahn formerly served as a Trump adviser on corporate regulatory reform, but resigned ahead of an August 2017 New Yorker article that detailed potential conflicts of interestinvolving his stake in an oil-refining company, CVR Energy.
Icahn didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
Additional reporting by Bruce Golding
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