Elliott Associates Offers to Buy Novell

I'd guess what they mean by leverage is Elliot Associates putting a bunch of their cash into Novell. A hedge fund with money to invest these days may not trust any of the things they could invest in as much as their own ability to produce a good return by managing a company. (In part, this is the reason that companies can't get loans easily: it's not that there isn't the money to loan, it's that the people who have it don't trust credit ratings)