: Fenix Investors

“Back in late 1995 early ’96, when we were at our peak, we were literally hours away from buying Apple for about $5 to $6 a share,” former Sun President Ed Zander would later recall in 2011.
In 1993, Apple missed guidance on its quarterly earnings. That was enough for Apple’s board to fire Sculley and install early Apple employee Michael Spindler.
Things were so bad that the board eventually assigned Spindler the task of finding a buyer for the company.
And so, Spindler talked to Sun Microsystems, the manufacturer of high-end computer workstations and servers, about an acquisition in early 1996.
It didn’t work, and the deal fell apart. So did Spindler’s acquisition talks with IBM and Philips.
Amelio would go on to buy Steve Jobs’ startup NeXT Computer for $429 million, bringing the Apple cofounder back into the fold — which would backfire on him, when Jobs convinced Apple’s board to oust Amelio in early 1997.