Japanese firm Fujifilm filed a lawsuit in a district court in New York on Monday 18 June 2018, seeking “punitive damages for Xerox’s intentional and egregious conduct” in cancelling the fairly complex agreement that would have merged all of Xerox in the two companies’ existing joint venture entity Fuji-Xerox. Fujifilm wants more than US$ 1 billion from Xerox for backing out of a merger between the two companies.
The US$ 1 billion amount Fujifilm is seeking is significantly higher than the US$ 183 million ‘termination fee’ the companies agreed on in case one of them walked away from the agreement. Fujifilm is arguing that Xerox has deprived it of the benefits of the mutually agreed deal and is also demanding that Xerox be ordered to pay the US$ 183 million termination fee.
In the works for the past year, the deal was and announced at the end of January 2018. Since then, Xerox investors Carl Icahn and Darwin Deason who own 15% of Xerox stock between them, have gone to court to block the deal and vociferously opposed it, saying it undervalued the company. Xerox shares have recently come down from US$ 30 to about US$ 27 a share while Icahn and Deason have consistently indicated that they are looking for a value of US$ 40 a share.
After the disruption of the deal Xerox has seen a huge change in its board composition with CEO Jeff Jacobson the main architect of the deal stepping down along with five other board members. Xerox has said in a statement that it was “extremely confident” about its right to back out of the deal. It said it would seek remedies for Fujifilm’s “mismanagement and misconduct.”
Fujifilm’s statement says that it continued to believe that its takeover of Xerox was the “only correct solution” for investors in both companies. “It is inconsistent with shareholder democracy to allow Carl Icahn and Darwin Deason, minority shareholders with only 15% of Xerox’s shares, to dictate the fate of Xerox,” the company added.
2023 promises an interesting ride for print in India
Indian Printer and Publisher founded in 1979 is the oldest B2B trade publication in the multi-platform and
multi-channel IPPGroup. While the print and packaging industries have been resilient in the past 33 months since the pandemic lockdown of 25 March 2020, the commercial printing and newspaper industries have yet to recover their pre-Covid trajectory.
The fragmented commercial printing industry faces substantial challenges as does the newspaper industry.
While digital short-run printing and the signage industry seem to be recovering a bit faster, ultimately
their growth will also be moderated by the progress of the overall economy. On the other hand book
printing exports are doing well but they too face several supply-chain and logistics challenges.
The price of publication papers including newsprint has been high in the past year while availability is diminished by several mills shutting down their publication paper and newsprint machines in the past four years. Indian paper mills are also exporting many types of paper and have raised prices for Indian printers. To some extent, this has helped in the recovery of the digital printing industry with its on-demand short-run and low-wastage paradigm.
Ultimately digital print and other digital channels will help print grow in a country where we are still far behind in our paper and print consumption and where digital is a leapfrog technology that will only increase the demand for print in the foreseeable future. For instance, there is no alternative to a rise in textbook consumption but this segment will only reach normality in the next financial year beginning on 1 April 2023.
Thus while the new normal is a moving target and many commercial printers look to diversification, we believe that our target audiences may shift and change. Like them, we will also have to adapt with agility to keep up with their business and technical information needs.
Our 2023 media kit is ready, and it is the right time to take stock and reconnect with your potential markets and customers. Print is the glue for the growth of liberal education, new industry, and an emerging economy. We seek your participation in what promises to be an interesting ride.
