Ex-Apple execs hop on the Spac track

Acquicor raises $150m to buy tech firms

By Tony Smith • Get more from this author

16th March 2006 12:57 GMT

Apple's co-founder, one of its former CEOs and an ex-Apple CTO have formally announced their partnership in a technology acquisition company a month after reports they were planning just such a move and eight months after the firm was founded.

acquicor management team
Woz, Amelio and Hancock

Steve Wozniak will be joined by Gil Amelio and Ellen Hancock at Acquicor, a self-styled "blank cheque" company - also known as a 'special-purpose acquisition company', Spac for short - "for the purpose of acquiring, through a merger, capital stock exchange, stock purchase, asset acquisition or other similar business combination, one or more domestic and/or foreign operating businesses in the technology, multimedia and networking sectors."

Acquicor has $150m to spend on tech companies thanks to an IPO undertaken on the American Stock Exchange (AMEX) this week.

Based in Newport Beach, California, and founded in August 2005, Acquicor is run by Amelio as chairman and CEO. Hancock gets the COO's job, while Wozniak was named CTO.

Woz's foundation of Apple with Steve Jobs is well-documented. Amelio spent 500 days between 1996 and 1997 at Apple as CEO during which time he decided to buy Jobs' company, NeXT, in order to gain a next-generation Mac operating system. He almost acquired Be, run by another ex-Apple staffer, Jean-Louis Gassée.

Jobs eventually took command of Apple and Amelio quit. As part of the Amelio regime, Hancock, then Apple's CTO, left too. Amelio arguably put in place many of the manufacturing and hardware schemes Jobs was later to be given credit for, such as streamlining the product range and reducing the company's dependancy on proprietary technology. ®