Business Notes CORPORATE RAIDERS

Corporate raider Carl Icahn, who owns 17.3% of Texaco, has tirelessly hectored its top management for 1 1/2 years with charges that the giant oil company is poorly run. Icahn has repeatedly threatened to stage a hostile takeover, and even tried unsuccessfully to replace Texaco's directors in an old-fashion proxy fight late last spring. Finally, after 14 hours of peace talks, Icahn agreed last week to sign a standstill agreement that prevents him from buying any more stock in the company or trying to wrest control for another seven years.

Icahn will extract a rich payoff. Texaco agreed to pay a special shareholder dividend of $2 billion, nearly $340 million of which will go to the raider. The money will come from the oil firm's $7 billion in proceeds from assets it has sold off since last June, partly at Icahn's urging.

Now the raider's fattened cash hoard raises the question of where he will strike next. Icahn, who took over TWA and became its chairman, already owns 11.4% of USX, and has shown interest in buying at least some of the assets of Texas Air.