Icahn Boosted Stake in USX, Reports Claim

Despite reports that two of the four leading corporate raiders who had earlier targeted USX Corp. have sold off their holdings, investor Carl C. Icahn apparently increased his stake in the big energy and steel conglomerate on Wednesday.

Widespread Wall Street speculation about Icahn’s move to increase his holdings to more than 5% of USX’s 257 million shares made the company--formerly U.S. Steel--the most active stock on the NYSE on Wednesday. With 11,043,000 shares traded during the day, the stock closed at $24.75 per share, up $1 in composite trading.

Icahn, the New York investor who has already acquired Trans World Airlines, could not be reached for comment. But the reports of his activity came just after it appeared that interest among leading corporate raiders in USX was beginning to wane.

Others Pull Out

Minneapolis investor Irwin L. Jacobs and Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens Jr. have reportedly sold off their newly acquired holdings in USX, and many on Wall Street believed those moves signalled that USX had become overpriced as a result of the hectic trading.

USX’s stock price has soared since August, when Australian raider Robert Holmes a Court announced that he planned to acquire up to 15% of USX. There has been no evidence since, however, that Holmes a Court has acquired a large block of stock.

USX management also helped cool off the stock on Sept. 22, when it announced that it was conducting a study of how best to restructure to fend off the raiders.

But sources familiar with the USX trading activity claimed that, while USX is not as big a bargain as it was before Holmes a Court moved in, it is still underpriced.

Charles Bradford, a widely respected steel analyst at Merrill Lynch, insists that USX’s break-up value is somewhere between $30 and $40 per share, despite other estimates that the firm’s assets couldn’t be sold off for more than the equivalent of $21 to $22 per share.