Icahn See What You Did There

Carl Icahn is giving up trying to wrangle Apple into increasing its stock buyback program.

His MO in this case, and which he’s used before, is to buy up tons of shares in a company and then politely threaten to dump them if the company won’t pay up. In essence, holding those shares for ransom.

I wonder what made him give up this time — Cupertino’s typical intransigence or the belief that the company is set for re-accelerated growth?