Xerox split completed

Xerox split completed

January 3, 2017

Reported by Recycler Magazine

The company has now split into two public companies.

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The completion was announced in a press release, which said that Conduent will now “act as a business process outsourcer”, helping companies to automate and simplify business processes. The other half of the company will still be known as Xerox and act as a “document technology company” and the Wall Street Journalreported in December that the CEO of Xerox expected to “make more layoffs in the new year”, although the company has not yet announced anything further.

A local newspaper in the area where the OEM is based, Rochester Business Journal, said that the split of the company was “the top business story of 2016” which was decided by staff and readers in surveys. The paper noted that Xerox is the region’s largest employer with 6,400 employees and quoted Ursula Burns, former Xerox Chairman and CEO, who in November said: “Our strategic transformation program and separation are designed to fundamentally strengthen our businesses and align them closely with the demand of our clients and opportunities in the market.

“We are embedding productivity and cost efficiency into all areas of our business, which will benefit us for years to come.”

The OEM announced at the beginning of 2016 that it planned to split into two companies before the end of the year, with the split into Conduent and Xerox – for business process optimisation and hardware respectively, and worth $11 billion (€10.1 billion) and $7 billion (€6.4 billion) respectively. Xerox’ new CEO was revealed to be Jeff Jacobson, while Ashok Vemuri will run Conduent.

Last November, the OEM’s largest shareholder, who attempted to block the split, agreed a settlement in a court case. Darwin Deason had sued Xerox because of the spin-off of its document outsourcing business, as he felt that his shares would lose value after the split. However, during November, the OEM’s board approved the split and said it would take place by 31 December.