Xerox Ends Its Hostile Takeover Bid For HP

Xeros is pulling the plug on its hostile bid to buy larger rival HP (Warning: paywalled; alternative source) after the coronavirus pandemic undermined the copier maker's ability to pull off the debt-laden merger. The Wall Street Journal reports: Xerox said Tuesday it is ending both its more than $30 billion tender offer and a proxy fight to replace the printer and PC maker's board. Xerox concluded it is no longer prudent to pursue the deal given the public health crisis and resulting market swoon. The move puts the kibosh on one of the biggest mergers in the works and underscores the blow that the coronavirus has dealt to the world of deal making.

It marks the end of a five-month-long offensive by Xerox, kicked off when its offer became public in early November after the two companies had earlier explored a combination quietly but failed to come to an agreement. HP has repeatedly rebuffed its rival since then, rejecting Xerox's latest cash-and-stock offer of $24 a share and an earlier one as insufficient and too risky given the amount of debt involved. Xerox's move to buy a company more than three times its size was always going to be a challenge, but at the outset the company was in a stronger position than it is today. It had cash coming in from the sale of its joint venture with Fujifilm and its stock had been rising as it continued to cut costs.

April fools?

[Ukab the Great]

Isn't Xerox in worse shape than HP, or are we jumping the gun on the April Fool's Slashdot stories?

Re:

[gtall]

Yep, they have Carl Icahn on their side.

Xerox is lucky

[bobstreo]

the HP stock price is down to about $17.36 a share at the moment.

Talk about a collision course between two icebergs.

Still, better than Carly Fiorina...

About damn time

[slashmydots]

I can see why they wouldn't want to buy the company who makes the worst, highest TCO, least reliable printers plus has the worst rating for customer service for basically all products across the board.

Re:

[sconeu]

Sigh... I remember when HP was synonymous withe "M-1 Tank" for reliability.

Good News

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

I was peripherally involved when Burroughs took Sperry Univac over back in the late 1980s. Some people I knew who were closer to the proceedings said they considered it to be simple corporate theft.
Mike Blumenthal [wikipedia.org] (Jimmy Carter's Secretary of the Treasury) was in charge of Burroughs when they launched a highly leveraged buy-out - dressed as a "merger" - for Sperry. Neither company was in particularly good shape to start with and when Burroughs completed the deal - forming a company which was the second lar

Re:

[whodat54321]

Unisys is far from dead. They are still a worldwide company engaged in what is best described as government business. SAIC recently bought out their US Defense department business (more on that here: https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]), because Unisys can't do the cloud, and that SAIC needs 'specialized workers' (read: those who have security clearances) that Unisys has. Xerox and HP was more a M&A (merger and aquisition) move aimed at improving a top line to impress those invested in it.