Stefan Mileschin

Merger possible

Xerox is considering making a cash-and-stock offer for HP which has a market value of about $27 billion.

According to The Wall Street Journal, there is no guarantee Xerox will follow through with an offer or that one would succeed. HP, which installed a new chief executive just last week, is more than three times the size of Xerox and any bid would be at a premium to its current stock price, the people said.

However, to be fair to Xerox it has a bit of cash to spend as it has a $2.3 billion windfall from a deal to sell stakes in joint ventures with Fujifilm Holdings and has a $1 billion-plus lawsuit filed against it dropped.

Xerox has also received an informal funding commitment from a major bank, known as a "highly confident letter", the Journal claimed.

A deal would join two household names with storied pasts that have been scrambling to retool their businesses as the need for printed documents declines. Both companies are in cost-cutting mode and a union could afford new opportunities to shed expenses -- to the tune of more than $2 billion, the people said.

https://fudzilla.com/news/49739-xero...ders-buying-hp