Woz's latest venture

["Mike Ching" <kulasoft@verizon.net>]

http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/13/technology/pluggedin_fortune/

Apple alumni want your money
Acquicor Technology plans to make acquisitions -- but it can't tell you what
it's buying.

By Adam Lashinsky, FORTUNE senior writer
February 14, 2006: 11:37 AM EST

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.