News

22 December 2006

Acquicor closes $145m private placement to fund Jazz acquisition

Acquicor Technology Inc has closed its private placement of $145m worth of its 8% convertible senior notes (due 2011) to qualified institutional buyers. Acquicor has also granted initial purchasers a 45-day option to buy up to an additional $21.75m of notes, convertible into shares of the company’s common stock at an initial conversion price of $7.33 per share.

Acquicor says it will use proceeds from the offering for its planned $260m acquisition of CMOS and SiGe BiCMOS wafer foundry Jazz Semiconductor Inc of Newport Beach, CA, USA, which was announced in late September. The gross proceeds of the offering will go into an escrow account and, pending approval of the acquisition by stockholders, will fund the merger and general corporate purposes.

Acquicor was formed in August 2005 by Apple Computer Inc co-founder Steve Wozniak as chief technology officer, Ellen M. Hancock as chief operating officer and president (former chief technology officer of Apple and chief operating officer of National Semiconductor) and Gilbert F. Amelio as chairman and CEO (former chairman and CEO of Apple and National Semiconductor Corp). The purpose was to acquire - by 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. The company subsequently raised $172.5m in its March 2006 initial public offering.

Acquicor’s take-over of Jazz is expected to be completed in Q1/2007. Jazz will then become a subsidiary of Acquicor, though it will continue to operate as Jazz Semiconductor.

See related item:

All that Jazz: Acquicor to acquire Jazz Semiconductor

Visit: http://www.acquicor.com