Carl Icahn Didn't Buy Some Shares on Time

This post originally appeared in Money Stuff.

Here is a neat trick. AmTrust Financial Services Inc., an insurance company, announced in March that it would be taken private by its chief executive officer and his family, who are the company’s largest shareholders. Carl Icahn, who enjoys messing with companies, saw the announcement and decided that the takeover looked like a sweetheart deal for the controlling family. So he set about buying shares to vote against the deal and see if he couldn’t get something better. And then, after he had bought a bunch of shares, AmTrust said: Sorry Carl Icahn, you are too late. Specifically it announced on May 4 that the shareholder meeting to vote on the deal will be held on June 4, and that the record date for the meeting—the date on which you needed to own shares in order to vote at the meeting—was April 5. Icahn’s purchases started on April 26 and continued through last week; he owns about 9.4 percent of the company (including through forward contracts where he still hasn’t gotten the shares) but can’t vote. (To be fair the majority of his purchases were after the company announced the April 5 record date, and he launched his proxy fight on May 17.)