A group of US investors led by Carl Icahn and Warren Lichtenstein said on Thursday it has again raised its stake in KT&G Corp, the latest move in its bid to shake up and take control of South Korea's top tobacco maker.

The Icahn group said in a filing to South Korea's financial regulator it had increased its stake in KT&G to 7.66 per cent from 7.34 per cent to have a bigger voice in the firm's management.
The announcement came a month after the group of US investors, the second-largest shareholder in KT&G after Franklin Mutual Advisers LLC, said it had raised its stake to 7.34 per cent from 6.72 per cent.
Icahn's group has offered to buy KT&G at 60,000 won per share, valuing the firm at nearly US$ 10 billion, in the first foreign hostile bid for a major South Korean firm. The group has yet to file a formal tender offer with the financial regulator.
The US investors are also urging the company to sell its lucrative ginseng unit and other non-core assets to boost the share price, proposals rejected by KT&G so far. KT&G, which controls 70 per cent of the world's seventh-largest cigarette market, has non-core assets ranging from real estate to pharmaceuticals, valued at US$ 2 billion according to JP Morgan. (pi)