Apple Sitting on Extraordinary Pile of Cash

Apple CEO Tim Cook had dinner with billionaire investor Carl Icahn last night, and Icahn gave him an earful: He says he "pushed hard" for a $150 billion buyback for shareholders, reports Bloomberg. And as a new Moody's analysis shows, the company is sitting on an enormous cash hoard—$147 billion, which accounts for 10% of all corporate cash, reports the Wall Street Journal. (Or at least cash held by nonfinancial companies.) That's almost double the $77 billion held by second-place Microsoft. The buyback is a "no-brainer," says Icahn.

"I feel very strongly about this," he tells CNBC. "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." (More Apple stories.)