By Graham K. Rogers

Earlier today in the Cassandra Monday review I wrote of a recommendation by proxy advisory firm Egan-Jones to reject the plans put forward by corporate raider, Carl Icahn, for a large scale buyback of Apple shares.

With Apple already having brought back several $billion of shares (at a good price, which makes a lot of sense), the Icahn plan is apparently in tatters - time to walk away Carl. As well as other large shareholders like CalPERS coming out against Icahn, Reuters reports that proxy advisory firm Egan-Jones advised shareholders to reject Carl Icahn's demand about expanding the stock buyback program. The proposal will be put to a vote this month at the annual shareholders meeting [my link for this was MacDaily News].

Now, some 12 hours later there are two other strong recommendations to reject the Icahn plans. The first, reported by Michael J. De La Merced on DealBook, is from the New York City Comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, who believes that "Apple's executive team is better positioned to decide the company's financial path" and will push for rejection of the plan [my source for this was, again, MacDaily News].

With a similar approach, Institutional Shareholder Services recommended on Sunday that Apple shareholders vote against the Icahn plan, Ina Fried reports for re/code, adding also that the Annuals Shareholders Meeting, at which the vote for this proposal will take place, is on 28 February.

Following the above news from ISS, it was announced that Carl Icahn has now withdrawn his $50b buyback proposal, Ben Lovejoy reports on 9to5 Mac, in an update to the information on the ISS recommendation.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand where he is also Assistant Dean. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.