Activist investor Carl iCahn has bought up another 2.8 million shares of Apple, worth around $1.7 billion, says a regulatory filing from Thursday. That brings iCahn’s total holdings in Apple to more than 7.5 million shares, a stake worth almost $4.5 billion.
MacRumors reports iCahn’s investment follows Apple’s April announcement of a dramatic increase in its share repurchase authorization to $90 billion, up from $60 billion.
Apple is also set to implement a 7:1 stock split in June and also plans to return more than $130 billion to shareholders under its capital return program by the end of 2015.
Prior to Apple’s announcement, iCahn had been pushing Apple to increase its stock buyback program. He had abandoned a legal effort to have shareholders recommend an increased share repurchase in February, following Apple’s buyback of $14 billion in stock in January.
(Note: MacTrast is not misspelling Carl’s last name accidentally. We will spell it as “iCahn” until he begins spelling it that way. Anyone who holds that much Apple stock should appreciate the spelling method.)
