Following news yesterday that Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia paid an average of about $17.25 a share for his 5%-plus stake in Apple Computer Inc (CI No 3,132), which he says he bought over several weeks for an aggregate investment of $115m, The New York Times reckons that Apple is now actively looking for a friendly merger partner, citing several executives close to the company. One executive that does business with Apple said employees at the company had told him that the company was again in talks with Sun Microsystems Inc. If Apple were to be maintained in its present form, with manufacturing as well as software, Motorola Inc is still about the only convincing buyer because it is by no means clear that Sony Corp could run Apple successfully.
