Thursday, January 15, 2009

Icahn Sues Steel for Fraud

ACF Industries, a Company affiliated with Carl Icahn, is suing Steel Partners for fraud.

According to a Reuters article, ACF - which had invested $15M in 2005 with Steel Partners, filed a lawsuit against Steel for trying to restrict investors' ability to pull their money out and for not giving proper notice of their plans to convert the hedge fund into a publicly-traded holding Company. (See our Jan 12 Blog post)

Bank of America, acting as master trustee for ACF Industries' employee benefits plan, charged that Steel Partners and its manager, Warren Lichtenstein, "pulled off a classic 'bait and switch' by stripping investors of what they had purchased and replacing it with something entirely different."