Who caught Carl Icahn's latest project, at eBay? He plans to nominate two director candidates, and wants it to spin PayPal into a separate company. 

He has also agitated for at least $50 billion in share repurchases in 2014 at Apple (see proposal 10, p. 62 of this year's proxy statement). 

What connects these two? He submitted non-binding (precatory) shareholder resolutions on these subjects. He proposed the same types of resolutions that individuals, labor pension funds, and socially conscious institutions propose. At Apple, investors will also vote on resolutions concerning human rights, sustainability, proxy access, and data confidentiality, things that investors routinely ignore (as they should), along side Icahn's proposal. Why would he get mixed up with this stuff? 

Icahn has not talked about his methods. He may do this, though, because starting this year, shareholder proposals can pressure corporations in new ways. BoDs must respond to winning shareholder proposals, or face the likely prospect of more serious opposition in subsequent years.