San Francisco - Investor Carl Icahn on Monday announced the end of his campaign to pressure Apple into increasing its share buyback program, saying that recent purchases by the technology giant had gone a long way to meeting his goals.
Icahn said in an open letter that 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”.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has announced in recent weeks a share buyback worth $14-billion, and the company is on track to buy at least $32-billion of shares through the end of the year, Icahn said. While that is $18-billion short of Icahn's call for a $50-billion repurchase, he said that Apple's plans to launch new products in new categories, made him “extremely excited about Apple's future.” - Sapa-dpa