Icahn Fires Unproductive Office

A story about how Carl Icahn fired an entire office of employees in NYC after discovering they weren't adding value to the business.

"There's this great Carl Icahn story where he buys a business that makes subway cars. They've got a huge team in New York and a team somewhere in middle America. He goes to the team in New York - there's 3 floors of them in some fancy midtown building - and he's like 'So what do you guys do?' They show him all these presentations for 2 days and he's like 'Okay I saw the presentation, so what do you guys do?' and they're like 'We just told you.'

So he goes to visit the guy who runs the middle America operation that actually makes the railroad cars. He hangs out with the guy, and at the end of the day he asks 'So you know there are these guys in New York, what do they do for you, do you need them?'

The guy says 'No those guys don't do anything. In fact, I got 4 guys that are just there to manage those guys and all the questions they bother us with. If you get rid of those guys I think the business will continue to grow and we'll be fine.'

The next day Icahn goes back to New York and fires 3 floors of people. He tells this story with such a smile and actually says 'This was pretty early in my career so it took me a couple months to do this. If it was now, I would buy the company and fire them like the next week.'"