Acquicor headed by former Apple execs

A group of former Apple executives are looking to create a new company called Acquicor Technology, which is set to begin trading on the American Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol ACQU. The company founders are Gil Amelio (Apple's CEO in the mid-1990s), Ellen Hancock (former Apple executive and CEO of Exodus Communications), and Steve Wozniak (Apple's co-founder). Acquicor is a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. Known in the industry as a "blank check" firm, the founders are traveling across the country asking institutional investors to offer up $100 million for an acquisition they cannot identify. The rules of SPACs state that the team can't talk to buyout candidates until they've raised enough cash, after which the company has two years to spend most of the money or give it back to investors. Acquicor 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," according to a report from CNNMoney.com.

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ibugv4

hmm

02/14, 2:38pm, EST

So Amelio and Good Steve buys back Apple from Bad Steve so he can play in the magic kingdom?

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johnsonua

What? You LIKED 1997?

02/14, 2:41pm, EST

Some sort of masdochist, are you?

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porieux

actually

02/14, 3:08pm, EST

a lot of the good ideas that brought apple back came from that era

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Senbei

re: actually

02/14, 4:51pm, EST

Need to agree. Amelio inherited a mess and just like turning a large boat, it took too long for the fruits to be seen before he was ousted. His era laid the groundwork including bringing Ellen Hancock into the company as CTO. If it weren't for her killing the not invented here syndrome that plagued Apple's engineering culture at the time, they would have continually spun its wheels with regards to Copland/Gershwin instead of evaluating and then acquiring an outside option.

Even some of the R&D and design prototypes which became the iMac were done during that period. This is where the Amelio era fell on its face as he was mainly an operational person and had zero charisma or marketing sense (I'm sure some will remember that long drawn out boring keynote). Designers like Ive's were pretty much in the bowels of the company. It took Jobs to get the most out of those groups of designers and engineers to put together those various pieces which eventually became the product that paved the way for the larger recovery.

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