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From Barron's 2-12-07 issue:

WHAT ELSE IS ON CARL ICAHN'S SHOPPING LIST? That question has been making the rounds since the billionaire investor announced he had amassed a 1.4% stake in Motorola (MOT), and plans to prod the company to buy back a very big pile of its cheap shares.

If Icahn's assessment is right, other telecom-equipment and chip companies may soon find themselves caught in the cross-hairs of impatient shareholders or buyout firms, all eyeing their cash stashes. And Icahn isn't the only one on the prowl. Recent multi-billion buyouts of Freescale Semiconductor (FSL) and Philips Electronics' (PHG) chip unit suggest that cash-rich chip or telecom-equipment makers with underleveraged balance sheets are quickly becoming a new quarry.

"Both events represent an effort to extract shareholder value through a change in capital structure," says Zhiping Zhao, a senior analyst at the independent research firm CreditSights, who sees mounting "pressure from shareholders for these companies to return excess cash, as well as optimize capital structure and create shareholder value."

But Zhao flagged companies like ADI (ADI), Linear Technologies (LLTC), Maxim (MXIM), Altera (ALTR), and Xilinx (XLNX) as potential LBO targets. European companies like Infineon (IFX) and ST Microelectronics also screen as cheap LBO targets considering the debt that can be loaded onto their ledgers.

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