“At $137 billion, Apple’s cash stockpile is the biggest around — a little more than double Microsoft’s, which ranks second-largest,” John Paczkowski reports for AllThingsD. “A grotesquely large cash cache — one that will be obscenely large by year’s end if Apple doesn’t do something with it.”
“Moody’s Investors Service figures Apple’s cash could balloon beyond $170 billion by year’s end if the company doesn’t start returning some cash to shareholders, whether it be through buyback, increased dividend or even distributing those perpetual preferred iPref shares that Greenlight Capital founder David Einhorn proposed,” Paczkowski reports. “‘I believe $170 billion in cash by year end 2013 is conservative,’ Moody’s Senior Vice President Richard Lane told AllThingsD, ‘unless Apple decides to do something materially different with respect to capital allocation.'”
Read more about Apple’s burgeoning cash pile in the full article here.