Carl Icahn steps up pressure on Apple for stock buyback

San Francisco: Billionaire investor Carl Icahn said on Wednesday that he has filed a shareholder proposal with Apple for a much smaller stock buyback plan than he has advocated previously, as he continued to pressure Apple to share more of its cash pile.

“Gave $AAPL notice we’ll be making a precatory proposal to call for vote to increase buyback programme, although not at $150 billion level,” Icahn said in a tweet.

CNBC said Icahn’s plan calls for a $50 billion buyback programme.

Icahn had been urging Apple to buy back $150 billion worth of shares. Icahn owns approximately 0.5% of Apple’s outstanding shares, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Icahn on Tuesday told Time magazine that he filed a shareholder proposal with Apple on 26 November, three days before the deadline for measures to be voted on at the company’s next annual shareholders meeting.

“As part of our regular review process, we are once again actively seeking our shareholders’ input on our programme, and as we said in October, the management team and our board are engaged in an ongoing discussion about it which is thoughtful and deliberate,” Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said. “We will announce any changes to our current programme in the first part of calendar 2014.” Reuters