Icahn Enterprises faces lawsuit over collusion in Endeavor buyout

Carl Icahn has never been one to quietly accept a deal he doesn’t like. But a new lawsuit suggests that his firm’s aggressive challenge to Endeavor Group Holdings’ buyout may have crossed a legal line.

A complaint filed in Delaware Chancery Court on September 21, 2026, accuses Icahn Enterprises, Carl Icahn-affiliated entities, and several other hedge funds of unlawfully colluding in their appraisal arbitrage bets against Silver Lake’s acquisition of Endeavor. The allegation: these players didn’t just independently decide the $27.50-per-share deal undervalued the company. They coordinated their strategies, which, if true, would transform a routine shareholder rights exercise into something far more legally problematic.

The deal that started it all

Silver Lake completed its acquisition of Endeavor’s outstanding shares on March 24, 2025, paying $27.50 per share. That price reflected a 55% premium over Endeavor’s unaffected trading price, putting the total deal value at roughly $13 billion.

Approximately 150 million Endeavor shares entered appraisal proceedings in Delaware Chancery Court in 2025, carrying a combined value of about $4.1 billion at the deal price. That makes it what has been described as the largest appraisal campaign in Delaware’s history.

The collusion claim

The September 2026 lawsuit targets what it calls coordinated collusion among Icahn and other arbitrageurs in their appraisal strategies. Rather than each firm independently deciding to pursue appraisal rights, the complaint alleges these parties worked together to amplify their collective leverage against the deal.

Icahn Enterprises and Handelsbanken Fonder AB, a Swedish asset manager, collectively held a stake valued at about $757 million at the $27.50 deal price. The two firms successfully won lead-plaintiff status in a separate fiduciary-duty class action back in September 2025.

That class action accuses Silver Lake and Endeavor executives, including Emanuel, of breaching fiduciary duties to minority shareholders. The core argument: the deal was structured to benefit insiders at the expense of public investors who had no real say in the outcome.

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