Icahn Interview on eBay Settlement

It’s not every day that you hear the billionaire activist investor Carl C. Icahn utter the statement, “it’s better to have peace than war.”

It’s particularly incongruous in the context of his fight against the board of eBay, the $70 billion e-commerce company which was one of the most public and acrimonious activist campaigns of 2014.

But during an interview with Mr. Icahn, the billionaire corporate rabble rouser, who has built up his $20 billion wealth by making a business of pressuring some of America’s biggest companies to bend to his demands, appeared to have toned down his usual aggressive stance.

Over recent months Mr. Icahn has taken to social media and television to criticize eBay, ratcheting up pressure on its board of directors . On Thursday, eBay announced it had reached an agreement with Mr. Icahn to settle the bitter fight.

The apparent sudden change of heart came after a series of meetings he had with eBay chief executive John Donahoe over the weekend, according to Mr. Icahn. “We really did talk a lot,” he said.

In a twist, the tête-à-têtes were set up by Jimmy Lee, the vice chairman of JP Morgan. Mr. Lee and the activist investor had rumbled during Mr. Icahn’s earlier battle against Dell, when Mr. Lee was part of a special committee of bankers hired by Dell to advise on the management buyout that Mr. Icahn was at first diametrically opposed to.

Mr. Icahn recalled his activist campaign against Forest Laboratories, which followed a similar sequence of events to his fight with eBay. After buying a stake in the struggling drug maker in 2009, Mr. Icahn attacked Forest’s management and mounted a proxy contest, before eventually getting his own way.

His investment in Forest proved to be a savvy bet when, earlier this year, it was sold to Actavis for $25 billion in cash and stock.

But some have viewed his settlement with eBay as an unusual concession: Mr. Icahn has agreed to withdraw his bid for two seats on the board of eBay and not to make demands to spin out its PayPal unit.

“I don’t look at it that way- I think there’s a little bit of a hidden value in this. I think the thing that we got was this confidentiality agreement and the good guy on the board,” he said. The new director is David W. Dorman, the former chief executive of AT&T.

“It just means that we can be involved and talk to these guys, and it’s really important to be involved,” Mr. Icahn said, citing a similar agreement with Forest.

He has cast the settlement with eBay as a positive development for the cause of activist investors like himself - the guys who buy up large stakes in companies and agitate for changes to the business.

“I think it’s a good move for activism - it’s another one where I think you have to get ownership of management,” he said.