Apple to step up acquisition initiatives?

Apple has hired a new employee to help it become more agressive in its acquisition strategy, a new report claims. BusinessWeek reports that Apple hired Adrian Perica, a West Point graduate and former Goldman Sachs investment banker, last year to head up its mergers and acquisitions department. Citing four unnamed sources, the report states that Perica was brought in to handle Apple’s purchase of online music site Lala.com following the company’s loss of mobile advertising firm AdMob to Google earlier in the fall, and that Perica was able to close the Lala deal in a few weeks, rather than the more typical two to three months. The article also notes that three of the 11 Apple acquisitions since CEO Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1997 have come in the last five months. Bill Whyman, an analyst with International Strategy & Investment, said, “Their [business] model is evolving, and you can expect them to broaden their horizons.”