A major McDonald's Corp shareholder has proposed the world's largest restaurant chain sell about two-thirds of company-owned restaurants in an initial public offering to bolster its stock price, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

William Ackman, managing partner of hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, said in an interview Tuesday he had proposed recently that McDonald's sell about 65 percent of its interest in company-owned restaurants.

Ackman, whose Pershing owns a 4.9 percent stake in McDonald's, said McDonald's had rejected his proposal.

McDonald's owns about 37 percent of the land on which its 30,000-plus restaurants world-wide stand. It leases the rest.

Copyright Reuters, 2005