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Apple alumni want your money
Acquicor Technology plans to make acquisitions -- but it can't tell you what it's buying.
 NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - Everybody wants a piece of the Apple magic. Investors have clamored for the stock, which has doubled in less than a year. Entrepreneurs have hopped aboard the iPod gravy train by building add-ons whose sales mushroom as the popular music player prospers. Now even Apple alumni who have nothing whatsoever to do with the company's current success want in on the action. Watch this week or next for shares of a new company called Acquicor Technology to begin trading on the American Stock Exchange under the ticker ACQU. Its founders are Gil Amelio, briefly Apple's CEO in the mid-1990s; Ellen Hancock, his Apple lieutenant and later CEO of Exodus Communications, which entered bankruptcy in 2001; and Steve Wozniak, Apple's loveable co-founder who hasn't worked there in a couple decades.
You've definitely heard of Apple (Research). Perhaps the names Amelio, Hancock and Wozniak ring a bell. But never heard of Acquicor? Don't feel bad. It barely exists. Acquicor is an example of a new kind of gift from investment bankers to eager public shareholders called a SPAC, or special purpose acquisition company. Its less formal name is a "blank check" company, a totally appropriate moniker because if you buy its shares you're giving a blank check to its founders. In this case, those luminaries will be attempting to sprinkle a little Apple pixie dust in the public markets. Amelio and team have been criss-crossing the country on a strange mission. They're asking institutional investors to give them $100 million so they can make an acquisition they can't yet identify. According to the bizarre rules under which SPACs are created, the team can't talk to buyout candidates until they've raised their cash. If all goes according to plan, however, Acquicor will complete its offering this week and its shares will trade publicly. Then it's got two years to spend most of the money or be forced to give it back. There are only clues about what Acquicor is looking for. According to its offering document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Acquicor digs the idea of convergence. It is focused "on businesses that develop or provide technology-based products and services in the software, semiconductor, wired and wireless networking, consumer multimedia and information technology-enabled services segments." Its hook? These kinds of companies will need "experienced leadership and growth capital" to take advantage of the coming together of these segments. Acquicor's founders certainly are experienced. They just don't have much background in buying and running companies trying to take advantage of emerging market trends. Amelio successfully ran National Semiconductor but stayed at Apple for only 17 months. When he left in 1997 it looked as if Apple might slip off the scene altogether. Hancock is a career IBMer who was one of many executives to preside over a high-flying bubble-era company that ultimately became a money pit for investors. Wozniak, well, he's never pretended to be much of a business guy. He is the group's technology chief. But buying companies and adding "experienced leadership" is very much a business proposition. SPACs are serious business, by the way. ThinkEquity, the San Francisco investment bank that is shepherding Acquicor's deal, has counted 43 blank-check companies that have raised a total of $2.6 billion in the last couple years. Their shares are up an average of 8.3 percent, which doesn't say much as two years is too little time for all but a handful to have even used their capital yet.
The Apple trio might turn out to be the greatest technology acquisitions team ever. The investors who give them a blank check for on-the-job training certainly will be watching to find out. |
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