(31 May 2008 2:30 pm)

MUMBAI: Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has cleared investor Carl Icahn's purchase of another 49 million shares of Internet company Yahoo! Inc. Icahn presently owns 10 million yahoo shares.

Icahn will be spending almost $1.5 billion to acquire additional Yahoo! shares which will give him a 4.3 per cent stake in the company. The billion dollar acquisition request was granted as part of FTC's weekly listing of transaction approvals.

Icahn earlier this month launched a proxy fight to seek removal of Yahoo! board of directors after the company rejected Microsoft's takeover bid of $47.5 billion and has nominated an alternate slate of ten directors inclusive of him.