Carl Icahn drops $50bn Apple buyback proposal
News in this afternoon that Carl Icahn has discarded his Apple buyback proposal.
Icahn, who is one of Apple’s biggest shareholders, was pushing for the tech giant to repurchase $50bn more of its shares this year.
Apple shareholders were due to vote on the non-binding plan on 28 February.
But in a letter to fellow shareholders, Icahn took back his proposal, after the Institutional Shareholder Services – a company that gives advice to US institutional shareholders on how to vote in such circumstances – advised against it.
The investment guru said he's pleased Apple's already repurchased $14bn of shares over the last two weeks and is on track to buy back at least $32bn over the fiscal year.
From the letter:
While we are disappointed that last night ISS recommended against our proposal, we do not altogether disagree with their assessment and recommendation in light of recent actions taken by the company to aggressively repurchase shares in the market.
…we see no reason to persist with our non-binding proposal, especially when the company is already so close to fulfilling our requested repurchase target.