Icahn smell money! Corporate raider grabs $1.2bn of HP stock to push for Xerox merger

Re: The man is certainly financially competent

I do feel sorry for their staff.

Re: The man is certainly financially competent

All Icahn cares about is short-term volatility and cares nothing about long-term strategic vision. Just how many people will lose their jobs just to satisfy Icahn's insatiable appetite for destruction is anyone's guess.

Re: The man is certainly financially competent

If competent means a financial rapist with no regards for the full ecosystem, and short-sighted short term looting of companies that he chooses to get involved in, then indeed he is exceedingly competent. The man rips apart organizations and lives for financial gain in a legal manner. There is no value-add in anything he does except for his own personal gain.

Re: The man is certainly financially competent

"I think a combination is a no-brainer, I believe very strongly in the synergies,"

And at the end of the mergers, the new entity will (still) be flogging printers and inks.

They are not called "raiders" for nothing.

Medieval raiders only care about the loot. When they are done, they kill (or enslave) survivors and burn anything left to the ground.

Not much different to modern day financial versions.

Icann cares nothing more than the profit he will/might get when he sells his shares.

At the end of the day, the low-level staff will be the biggest losers.

Xerox do make very nice upmarket printers. I think HP OEMs a lot of their own more upmarket offerings on the laser side.

If after a merger Xerox flogged the inkjet printers to Canon or Epson, it might make for more focus on both sides.

The function on my Canon MF620C that gets used the most is the scanner. It means I can fit a whole filing cabinet of stuff inside a micro SD card.

>HP has strength in printers and Xerox in copiers.

And HP Inc is also a major PC vendor...

I wonder if the idea is to sell this division to Dell...

We have had both Xerox and HP Mopiers. To be honest the HP’s are better.

Don’t think I have *ever* seen a standalone Xerox ‘copier’ ... ever. Canon, Minolta, Ricoh etc...before they became multi-function... scan, copy, mail, print, fax

Re: Icahn is a D!ck

...We do want our beloved crysler/dodge/jeep cars and trucks to continue because we love them...

Don't Fiat own the brands now? Soon to merge with PSA. They are all European now.

Re: Icahn is a D!ck

You might love them, but while i'm not usually picky about brands, the one Chrysler vehicle i've ever owned completely put me off ever owning another one. That intrepid was the biggest pile of crap ever.

Re: Dinosaurs of a digital age

Not sure why printing should become obsolete in the digital age - its been a while since it was restricted to paper.

Re: Dinosaurs of a digital age

One of the great myths of finance is that growth should be expected to go on for ever. It doesn't. Every new market looks as if it's taking off exponentially. It isn't. It's sigmoidal. If you're dealing with something consumable it'll flatten out at a fixed level of consumption. If you're dealing with something durable it flattens out at a given level of installed base; sales are the first differential of the installed base.

Expect the market to saturate. For consumables it's at a highish level which is why HP is keen on making the most out of ink and really in trouble if it can't make the most of the market. For durables it's basically replacement plus what can be squeezed out of the market with "upgrades" and "enhancements". That doesn't mean they're dinosaurs, it just means that the market's matured, just like you should have expected.

Re: Elementary hydrodynamics...

I'd have thought elementary marketing, at least for H/W, would be that once everybody's bought what they need of whatever it is the ship isn't actually sinking, it's just become a rowing boat.

Re: activist investor

Activist Investors go bankrupt so quickly you don't even notice they were there.