Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, the founder of Icahn Associates, just keeps killing it.
Yesterday, Chesapeake Energy's CEO Aubrey McClendon, who has been under fire, said that he will be retiring effective April 1.
The stock is up more than 10% following that news.
And it turns out that Icahn is the largest hedge fund shareholder in Chesapeake.
As of November 19, 2012, Icahn Associates owned 59,698,689 shares, or an 8.98% stake in Chesapeake, according to 13F data compiled by Bloomberg.
Here's what Icahn said in a statement following McClendon's announcement [via Street Insider]
Aubrey has every right to be proud of the company he has built, the world class team of people at Chesapeake and the collection of assets he has assembled, which in my opinion, are the best portfolio of energy assets in the country.
While it is known that some of these assets will be sold by the company in due course, I do not believe that this will in any way effect the ultimate realization of Chesapeake’s potential.
I am confident that history will prove that Aubrey has been correct about the value of natural gas in general and the value of Chesapeake in particular.
Icahn has been in the news non-stop in the last two weeks.
He had a grand slam last week when Netflix posted a surprise profits sending its shares skyrocketing. Two months ago, Icahn had disclosed a 9.98% stake that he bought for $58 dollars. The stock was last trading above $167 a share.
Then he disclosed a 5.6% stake in oil drilling contractor Transocean asking the company declare a $4/share dividend, the WSJ reported. The stock is up more than 1.6% since that was reported.
He doesn't win everything, though.
Our readers determined that Icahn's decade-long rival Bill Ackman won the battle of the billionaires on CNBC last Friday. While Ackman remained relatively calm and mostly said Icahn was dishonest and not nice, Icahn has hurling insults and curse words left and right.
SEE: Ackman And Icahn Brawled On CNBC In The Greatest Moment In Financial TV History >
