It's easy to call out a struggling company's leaders for mismanagement, much harder to identify the root of the problems and figure out how to reverse them. No one knows this better than
Carl Icahn, whose recent failures include not only his ineffectual stint on the board of Yahoo! Inc.[
YHOO], but last year's equally futile
meddling in Motorola Inc. [
MOT]. Some say Icahn was just unlucky with the targets he picked, or with his timing. Either way, he's taken an unusually steamy bath in the market this year.
Tech Ticker, in an attempt to show that bear markets hurt the big guys along with the little guys, takes a look at some of the most prominent investors and finds they've all racked up
massive losses in 2008. Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway [
BRK] is down 43% year to date, and other investing legends are showing comparable drops.
But Icahn stands out even in this crowd. His portfolio is down some 81%, far eclipsing the overall market's drop. No wonder he couldn't fix Yahoo! --Andrea Orr
