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Investor pushes Cook to 'buy back $150bn of Apple stock'
Thu, 3rd Oct 2013
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Apple's US$1bn investor Carl Icahn has revealed his intentions to push CEO Tim Cook hard for a $150bn share buyback plan.

After revealing his stake in the Cupertino firm in August, Icahn wants Cook to up plans for a total of $100bn in dividends and share repurchases, as announced earlier this year.

But despite Icahn's pressure, the activist investor insisted in an interview with CNBC that he wasn't trying to bully Cook.

"I'm certainly not threatening anything, and I'm not talking about some proxy fight," he told CNBC.

"[But] I feel very strongly about this.

"I can't promise you the stock will go up and I can't promise you they will do the buyback.

"But I can promise you that I'm not going away until they hear a lot more from me concerning this."

After tweeting that he had made his opinions felt to Cook over dinner, Icahn says the matter is far from over, and will resume by the end of the month.

"Had a cordial dinner with Tim last night. We pushed hard for a 150 billion buyback. We decided to continue dialogue in about three weeks," he tweeted.

Delving deeper into the issue with CNBC, Icahn stressed that an increased buyback was simply good business sense for the world's most valuable brand.

"It's a no-brainer and it makes no sense for this company with their multiple being so low not to do a major major buyback," he added.

"And there's another reason that I mention, that I think might go forgotten, the fact that you can borrow money so cheaply today.

"I don't think we are going to see this again."

Famed for his rather controversial style, Icahn was quick to stress no simply wouldn't be enough to deter him from his plans.

"Why wouldn't you do it? It makes no sense not to," he told CNBC.

"I want a reason. And the reason can't just be, 'Well, the board decided'.

"We're not accepting that. We're not going to accept this 'Well, it's business judgment, too bad'.

"That's complete bull as far as I'm concerned."