Apple's move to buy headphone maker and streaming music service Beats Electronics brought the company's acquisitive ways -- started after the death of founder Steve Jobs -- to the forefront.
Though Beats is by far Apple's most expensive acquisition, at $3 billion, it comes after CEO Tim Cook disclosed in April that the company had bought 24 companies in the previous 18 months.
Computerworld gives a Tip of the Hat to Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Adam Satariano for his incisive profile of former Goldman Sachs banker and military intelligence officer Adrian Perica, hired by Apple in 2009 to be its top dealmaker. Silicon Valley investors laud him for "getting things done," Satariano noted in the story, The Ex-Banker Behind the $3 Billion Apple-Beats Deal.
Satariano notes that while Perica "prefers to stay in the shadows" -- he's said to work in an unmarked building adjacent to Apple's headquarters -- he is closely watched in Silicon Valley.
For instance, the story notes that a San Francisco Chronicle report in April that Perica had met with executives of Tesla Motors set off many speculative stories from coast to coast about an Apple-Tesla combination.
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