Icahn gets antitrust go-ahead for Yahoo stock buy

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. antitrust regulators have given billionaire investor Carl Icahn the go-ahead to purchase large blocks of Yahoo (YHOO.O) stock, the Federal Trade Commission said on Friday.

The FTC, which routinely looks at large stock purchases, said the moves were approved in a listing that it puts out several times a week.

In mid-May, Icahn launched a campaign to replace Yahoo's board with new directors that would reopen buyout talks with Microsoft (MSFT.O), saying the board had acted "irrationally" in refusing the software giant's bid.

Microsoft walked away from its sweetened $47.5 billion offer for the Internet company earlier this month. Microsoft had initiated an unsolicited bid originally worth around $44.6 billion at the end of January, which Yahoo rejected as insufficient.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz, editing by Mark Porter)