Board facing corporate raider
Activist investor Carl Icahn is teaming up with fellow Xerox investor Darwin Deason to force a potential sale of the company. Icahn is the biggest individual shareholder in Xerox and Deason the third largest, although together they only hold a combined 16% in the company.
That said though, when corporate raider Icahn moves on such matters, the company boards he takes on usually have a hard fight on their hands.
Icahn and Deason have previously called on Xerox to break off or renegotiate a printing joint venture with Fujifilm, claiming it is unfavourable to Xerox. Icahn has also called for Xerox CEO Jeff Jacobson to go. According to the Wall Street Journal, the pair are now teaming up to call for a potential sale of the company.
Xerox said in a statement: “The Xerox board of directors and management are confident with the strategic direction in which the company is heading and we will continue to take action to achieve our common goal of creating value for all Xerox shareholders.”
The 50-year-old Fujifilm joint venture sees Xerox only having a 25% stake, with the rest being held by Fujifilm, which is significant to the latter's bottom line - accounting for nearly half the group’s overall operating profit. The Fuji Xerox joint venture generated $750m in operating profits on sales of $10bn for the 12 months ended March 2017.
Last week, Xerox signed a European distribution agreement with Midwich for managed print solutions to the European SMB market. Through the partnership, Midwich will provide Xerox cloud-based managed print services that will allow customers to “transform their workplaces from paper to digital”, said Xerox.