The Icahn Blog: Activist Investor, Passive Voice

In a business world where most CEO blogs are either pathologically dull or dully pathological, Jack Flack was hoping for something zippier from today's debut of the long-awaited blog from BICI (Billionaire Investor Carl Icahn).

Megan Barnett got it right with her assessment of the Icahn Report, which is long on bluster, and completely short on the jagged specifics that often make Icahn letters great entertainment.

Historically, the BICI shtick tends to either win big or lose big. It works well when he lays into targets with blunt, detailed summaries of their failings, often capturing what everybody is thinking and nobody has said. It fails badly when he overly generalizes, often sounding like your bitter old great-uncle complaining about corporate fatcats 40 years after they fired him for taking a swing at his foreman.

Barnett says the blog lacks Icahn's humor. But two pieces of irony tickled Jack Flack.

First, the blog's lone specific example cites Sandy Weill regretting that he did not set up any competition for his successor, Chuck Prince. Apparently the "competition" that Prince endured from Weill himself was not enough to ensure proper governance.

Second, the activist investor loves the passive voice, as entire paragraphs trudge by without a single active sentence.

How could that be?

Jack Flack theorizes that BICI likely dictates most of his musings. When spoken, passive constructions can often deliver rhythms that delight the ear. But when converted into writing, they tend to be as puffy and lazy as the corporate bosses Icahn enjoys torturing.