Carl Icahn ups his stakes in Apple and eBay
Carl Icahn continues to eat up shares in his favorite tech companies after doing battle with them.
A Thursday regulatory filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission spotted by The Wall Street Journal showed Icahn's stake in eBay at 27.8 million shares as of March 31. With eBay stock trading at around $51 Friday morning, Icahn's holdings in the company are now worth more than $1.4 billion.
Icahn's contentious relationship with eBay aired in public earlier this year when the two sides fought over such issues as the alleged conflicts of interest among board members and the future of PayPal. After several months of trading insults and accusations online, Icahn and eBay finally made peace last month.
The billionaire investor withdrew his proposal that the board spin off eBay's PayPal business and appoint two of his choices to the board of directors. In return, eBay appointed Icahn nominee David Dorman as an independent director to its board.
Icahn also increased his stake in Apple by 2.8 million shares to more than 7.5 million shares, the Journal added. With Apple trading at around $587 Friday morning, those shares are worth around $4.4 billion.
Icahn's dealings with the iPhone maker have been more civil, though he has publicly criticized the board for not aggressively buying back more stock as a way to spend excess cash and increase shareholder value.
In January, Icahn tweeted that "Apple's board is doing great disservice to shareholders by not having markedly increased its buyback." But in February, Apple bought back $14 billion in shares, prompting Icahn to pull back on his proposal that the company spend at least $50 billion on stock repurchases in 2014.
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