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Carl Icahn has doubled down on a fight to take control of Occidental Petroleum Corp., buying up more shares of the embattled oil-and-gas producer in recent days as its stock price plummets.
The billionaire shareholder activist now owns almost 10% of Occidental OXY, -17.71% , he said in an interview Wednesday. He held a roughly 2.5% stake as of the end of last year.
For almost a year, Icahn has been loudly criticizing Occidental’s $38 billion acquisition of Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and campaigning for the ouster of Chief Executive Vicki Hollub, the main architect of the deal. Occidental outbid its much-larger rival Chevron Corp. CVX, -2.29% , relying on $10 billion of pricey financing from another octogenarian billionaire investor, Warren Buffett.
Occidental’s market value has shrunk to less than $11 billion from more than $46 billion just before the deal was struck, hurt by doubts about the transaction and more recently the plunge in the stock and oil markets. According to Icahn’s calculations, taking into account extra stock issued to pay for the deal, shareholders have lost even more.
“One thing I’ve learned in life is not to let people manage your affairs who are delusional enough to think they could outbid Chevron and outsmart Buffett,” Icahn said. “And yet this is just what the board has done, and it cost the shareholders $47 billion.” He is seeking to replace Occidental’s entire board, which includes Hollub, at its annual meeting this spring.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
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