Carl Icahn, the 46th richest man in the world has made an interesting hire.  Icahn has hired Dane Hamilton, a hedge fund reporter from Thomson Reuters to manage his blog, The Icahn Report.  Hamilton will be publishing data regarding Icahn’s opinions on corporate America. 

When Icahn was nominating his own slate of directors for Yahoo!’s Board of Directors, Icahn communicated regularly on his blog regarding why he was doing so.  Hamilton has been writing for the last seven years about hedge funds and even about Icahn.  Hamilton recently published an article from Reuters called Icahn says Yahoo-Google ad deal has merit.

Carl Icahn grew up in Brooklyn, New York, dropped out of medical school, joined the army, then went back to NYC to work on Wall Street.  Icahn & Co. Inc. started in 1968.  Icahn has overtaken positions at RJR Nabisco, Yahoo!, Texaco, Phillips Petroleum, Western Union, Gulf & Western, Viacom, USX, American Can, Imclone, Marvel, Federal-Mogul, Kerr-McGee, BEA Systems, Medimmune, and Time Warner.  Icahn is currently worth about $14 billion.

Related Links:
1. NYT
2. The Icahn Report

The Thomson Corporation and Reuters Group PLC have announced today that an agreement has been made about its merger. The deal is worth $17.24 billion in cash and stock.

This merger of the second and third-largest financial news companies will be investigated by regulators and will be gearing to hyperactively compete with Bloomberg LP.  Regulators could take up to 9-12 months to approve of the merger.  The joint company will be led by current CEO of Reuters, Tom Glocer.

The Thomson family of Canada will be retaining 53% of the combined company and is selling its higher-education publication arm for $7.75 billion.  Thomson’s financial arm alone makes $2 billion in sales.

Thomson has a strong market presence in America and Reuters has a strong market presence in other countries.  Due to those circumstances, merging the companies truly symbolizes synergy.