Coverage: American icon Xerox selling to Fujifilm for $6.1 billion

Xerox, the company that pioneered copy machines, the computer mouse and other office technology, will come under the Japanese company Fujifilm’s control in a $6.1 billion deal.

Emily Sullivan of National Public Radio had the story:

Fujifilm and Xerox established the Fuji Xerox joint venture in 1962. Fujifilm owns 75 percent of that joint venture. In the deal announced Wednesday, Fuji Xerox will buy back that stake from Fujifilm, and Fujifilm will use those profits to purchase 50.1 percent of Xerox shares.

The new $18 billion company, also named Fuji Xerox, will have dual headquarters in Norwalk, Conn., and Tokyo, and trade on the New York Stock Exchange.

Xerox has been under pressure to find new sources of growth as email and digital sharing services such as Dropbox have hurt the demand for printing and photocopying.

As then-Xerox CEO Ursula Burns told NPR in 2012,“The world is changing. We all know this. And as that world changes, if you don’t transform your company, you’re stuck.”

Sarah Taddeo, Len LaCara and Sean Lahman of the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle reported that Xerox had faced unhappy shareholders:

The announcement follows weeks of agitation over the direction of Xerox, led by two activist shareholders unhappy with the company’s performance. The shareholders, Carl Icahn and Darwin Deason, had previously opposed any expansion of the joint venture.

Jacobson said Wednesday he’s not sure how Icahn and Deason, two of the company’s largest shareholders, will react to the merger news.

Earlier Wednesday, Xerox announced its fourth-quarter results, which included a loss from continuing operations and a $400 million charge related to the U.S. tax bill enacted last month.

Last week, Xerox announced plans to relocate all of its employees from its downtown Rochester, N.Y., location to its Phillips Road campus in the town of Webster, N.Y., by the end of the year.

Jeff Sutherland and Lisa Du of Bloomberg News reported that the joint venture will cut 10,000 jobs:

The joint venture will cut 10,000 jobs in Asia as part of the restructuring as the Japanese company struggles with an “increasingly severe” market environment, Fujifilm said.

Xerox and Fujifilm’s 55-year-old joint venture in Asia is the subject of a recent accounting probe into its practices in New Zealand and Australia, which prompted Icahn to call for renegotiating or scrapping the agreement.

The new company will accelerate revenue growth through its global reach and pursue developments in inkjet, imaging and artificial intelligence, it said.

“The proposed combination has compelling industrial logic and will unlock significant growth and productivity opportunities for the combined company, while delivering substantial value to Xerox shareholders,” Jacobson said in the statement.