Rapid Fire Oct. 12, 2012: Icahn Really Wants Oshkosh

* Investor Carl Icahn made an offer on the Oshkosh shares he does not already own for $2.7B, valuing the overall firm at $3B. With his current stake of about 9.5%, Icahn is the largest shareholder, but his proxy battle back in January failed. This follows a consistent takeover MO that Icahn applied across industries, with varying degrees of success. Earlier this week Navistar, where Icahn also ramped up a significant stake, appointed 3 board directors at his request. According to the Financial Times he is no longer interested in merging the two truck manufacturers. * The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) estimates [redacted PDF] that “a large number of culvert denial systems [link added by DID] might have been falsely reported by Afghan contractors as complete when, in fact, the denial systems were not installed or were installed in a defective manner, rendering them ineffective and susceptible to compromise by insurgents seeking to emplace IEDs.” * South Korea’s KAI will bid in a light utility helicopter competition in Turkey. * Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology received a $900K grant from the US Navy’s Office of Naval Research to develop a robot that can accomplish a […]