Canon who are struggling with HP in the enterprise and SMB commercial printing market have made a $3Billion takeover offer for Oce the Dutch office equiptment maker. According to the Financial Times Océ’s largest business is producing digital printers for tasks such as bank statements and marketing direct mail, and print shops. It also makes large format printers used for graphics and architectural plans and handles outsourced printing for institutions such as law firms. The Canon offer which is 6.4 of current EBITDA was made early on Monday morning. Tsuneji Uchida, Canon’s president, said the acquisition “will contribute greatly to our goal of becoming the overall number one presence in the printing industry”. “This is the best possible combination in the consolidating global printing industry and will deliver scale in R&D, manufacturing and distribution,” said Rokus van Iperen, the chief executive of Océ. Last year Océ made a net loss attributable to ordinary shareholders of €585,000 on sales of €2.9bn as a result of the economic slowdown and losses on disposals. Canon said it would finance the offer from its own resources. |
