Icahn Denounces Amylin’s Chairman

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn turned up the heat today in his proxy fight with San Diego-based Amylin Pharmaceuticals by calling for the resignation of chairman Joseph Cook. In a letter to Amylin that was filed with the SEC, Icahn criticized Cook for destroying shareholder value. He says the company, under Cook’s stewardship, has made many grievous mistakes. “Like an ‘imperial’ chairman you have taken steps to entrench yourself that we believe to be unconscionable,” Icahn wrote. Icahn, who owns almost 10 percent of Amylin’s stock, and Eastbourne Capital Management, which owns a 12.5 percent stake, are battling to take control of the company by submitting their own candidates for the company’s board.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.