Fuji and Xerox are ending their joint venture Fuji-Xerox with Fujifilm taking control of the operation and Xerox pocketing the proceeds.
As reports have since indicated, it looks like Xerox wants to use that money to try to take over computer giant HP so that those two can somehow curb the waning profitability of office and home printing revenues with a combined market effort.
Fuji, for its part, gets a 57-year-old joint venture and the end of a lawsuit it filed against Xerox for spurning its efforts at a merger with that company some time back. Fuji was seeking some $USD 1 billion from Xerox for the scuttled nuptials and it looked like it was going to be a protracted fight in the courtrooms – especially given how closely tied the two companies were with their former joint venture.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Fujifilm Shigetaka Komori said of the deal, “Fuji Xerox has now become a lean and strong company after a series of reforms we started in 2018, and I am confident that with this initiative it will be even stronger” and that the buyout would “facilitate faster decision making in a rapidly changing business environment.”
What all of this means for Fuji in the future in any concrete sense remains to be seen but there’s little doubt that the company is pretty happy to have all of this behind them. And Xerox’s move to swallow up a much larger rival demonstrates all we need to know about that company’s current priorities.
What do you think? Have you followed Xerox and Fujifilm’s drama? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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[Japan Today]
