Up­dat­ed: Carl Ic­ahn pro­pos­es three new Il­lu­mi­na board mem­bers in proxy fight

A proxy fight is brew­ing at Il­lu­mi­na as ac­tivist in­vestor Carl Ic­ahn ar­gues that the DNA se­quenc­ing gi­ant is cost­ing share­hold­ers bil­lions by fol­low­ing through with its Grail pur­chase amid an­tirust chal­lenges.

In a let­ter to Il­lu­mi­na share­hold­ers on Mon­day morn­ing, Ic­ahn stat­ed that $50 bil­lion of val­ue has been wiped from the com­pa­ny’s mar­ket cap­i­tal­iza­tion since Au­gust 2021.

“This val­ue de­struc­tion is a di­rect re­sult of a se­ries of ill-ad­vised (and frankly in­ex­plic­a­ble) ac­tions tak­en by the board of di­rec­tors of our com­pa­ny in con­nec­tion with the ac­qui­si­tion of GRAIL, Inc.,” Ic­ahn wrote. “To para­phrase William Shake­speare’s Ham­let, some­thing is rot­ten in the state of Il­lu­mi­na.”

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