Icahn Apparently Sells USX Stake for Less Than Expected

Financier Carl C. Icahn apparently sold his $1-billion stake in USX Corp. on Tuesday, settling for a far lower price than he once predicted the shares would bring.

The sale ends a stormy relationship between the oil and steel company and the corporate raider that began in 1986 and culminated last week when USX shareholders approved a restructured stock setup that Icahn had endorsed.

Icahn couldn’t be reached to confirm his sale of 33.9 million shares of USX-Marathon stock and another 6.8 million shares of USX-U.S. Steel stock, each at $25. The sale fetched about $1 billion.

But the reported transactions matched Icahn’s holdings in the Pittsburgh-based company, and no other investor had a comparable stake. He held 13.3% of USX Corp.

“It would appear it is indeed Icahn,” a USX official said. “The shares match his holdings to the number.”

When adjusted for last week’s splitting of USX stock into separate oil and steel shares, Icahn apparently sold for the equivalent of $30 a share. He is thought to have paid an average of $24 a share, most of which he bought in October, 1986.

That would mean a gain of about $203 million, not counting fees he paid on the trades and the dividends he earned on the shares.

His plans for the money were anybody’s guess. The owner of troubled Trans World Airlines, Icahn has recently indicated that he might try to buy back some of the carrier’s debt. Unions have complained that he hasn’t invested enough money in TWA.

Rebuffed by USX in a 1987 takeover bid when he held 11% of the company, Icahn bought the rest of his holdings in 1989 and began a proxy fight to gain control of the board. He dropped that after USX agreed to let shareholders vote on a plan to spin off 80% of the company. He lost, but 43% of the shares supported him.

Icahn’s complaint, shared by many investors, was that the company once known as U.S. Steel had become principally an energy company through its purchase of Marathon Oil--but the stock was depressed by its association with the troubled steel industry.

Icahn argued that the parts were worth more than the whole and figured that separate oil and steel shares would fetch $48.

Since then, USX management has conceded that Icahn made some “constructive suggestions” and has been trying to sell its steel operations. In a compromise that Icahn backed, shareholders last week approved management’s plan to create separate categories of stock tied respectively to the oil and steel divisions.

The separate shares went on sale a week ago Tuesday, and rather than rise sharply as some predicted, prices have been flat to lower. The $30 price apparently received by Icahn was nearly $3 a share less than the USX stock price the day before shareholders approved the separate shares.