CANON TO BUY OCE CORP FOR $1.09bl.

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Date: Tuesday November 17, 2009 11:01:51 am
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    http://www.reuters.com/article/mnaNewsTechMediaTelco/idUSLG31582620091116
    CANON TO BUY OCE CORP
    FOR $1.09bl.

    Canon 
    buys Dutch Oce for $1.1 bln, fights Ricoh

    * Canon to offer 8.60 euros/shr, including dividend
    *
    Deal worth 1.5 bln euros including debt, other obligations
    * Oce
    management and supervisory board support offer
    * Some pref holders
    and shareholders support deal
    * Oce shares up 68.5 pct

    TOKYO/AMSTERDAM,
    Nov 09  – Japan’s Canon  plans to buy Dutch copier and printer maker
    Oce for 730 million euros ($1.09 billion), challenging rivals Ricoh and
    Xerox  in a hunt for growth during the sector downturn.Copier and
    digital camera maker Canon and Oce said in a joint statement Monday that
    Canon intends to offer 8.60 euros per share, or 730 million euros, for
    Oce’s outstanding shares. The offer represents a premium of 70 percent
    to Oce’s Friday close.

    Canon’s offer follows little over a year
    after Japan’s Ricoh, the world’s largest copier maker, bought U.S.
    office equipment distributor Ikon Office Solutions, a deal which hit
    Canon’s U.S. operations hard as Canon machines had represented 60
    percent of the products Ikon handled before the acquisition. Canon, Oce
    and rivals have suffered from the economic slump, which forced companies
    to cut spending, including costs on copying and printing.Oce, which was
    loss-making in the past two quarters, has been cutting costs and jobs
    and has not paid a final 2008 dividend, while Canon and Ricoh reported
    sharp falls in their quarterly profit last month. “The deterioration of
    the economic market circumstances has influenced the performance of the
    industry but it was not the initiator for the strategic review process
    which, after thorough and careful evaluation, led to this proposal of
    joining forces with Canon,” Oce CEO Rokus van Iperen told reporters.

    Canon
    and Oce products are mutually supplementary, with the Japanese company
    having strength in regular office machines and mid- to lower-end
    production printers, while Oce excels in high-end production printers
    and advertisement-use large-sized printers, the Tokyo-based company
    said.Production printers, or digital commercial printers, are used to
    print such documents as product manuals and direct mail quickly and in
    large volume, and are a fast-growing segment of the global printer
    market.Oce shares were up 68.5 percent at 8.53 euros by 1119 GMT, after
    earlier reaching their highest level since June last year.Including debt
    and other obligations, the deal values Oce — which competes with Xerox
    and Konica Minolta Holdings — at about 1.5 billion euros ($2.2
    billion), Van Iperen said.

    HP, KYOCERA
    POSSIBLE COUNTERBIDDERS

    Analysts said the deal was good
    for Oce shareholders, as it solved most or all of the problems the
    company faced due to the drop in demand. They were divided about a
    possible rival offer.SNS Securities said in a note Hewlett-Packard and
    Kyocera  had sufficient financing options for a counter bid, while Ricoh
    and Konica Minolta currently had high debt levels and relatively low
    earnings generation.Petercam analyst Eric de Graaf, however, said it was
    unlikely that another bidder would emerge because of the bid price and
    commitment of some shareholders and Oce’s boards.Preference share
    holders Ducatus, ASR and ING — which together hold 19 percent of Oce’s
    share capital — agreed to sell their interests to Canon, while Oce
    shareholder Bestinver Gestion S.A. has agreed to tender its 9.5 percent
    stake.Oce’s management and supervisory boards support and will recommend
    the intended offer, Oce and Canon said.Canon, the world’s largest
    digital camera maker, is Japan’s 6th-most valuable company with market
    capitalisation totalling $50 billion. Its printers and copiers accounted
    for 65 percent of total revenues in 2008.

    Analysts said the deal
    is positive for Canon, while potentially negative for rival Japanese
    copier and printer maker Konica Minolta, which is in a business alliance
    with Oce.”Konica Minolta procures high-end production printing machines
    from Oce, while Oce procures lower-end machines from Konica Minolta,”
    Mizuho Securities analyst Ryosuke Katsura said.”(The) chances are Canon
    machines will replace Konica Minolta gear in this relationship,” he
    said.Shares in Canon closed down 1.5 percent at 3,370 yen ahead of the
    announcement, underperforming the benchmark Nikkei average .N225, which
    gained 0.2 percent.

    http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewiStockNews/articleid/3637458
    Canon to acquire biggest European printer
    maker Oce of Netherlands

    Canon Inc. said Monday it will
    buy out Oce NV of the Netherlands, the biggest printer maker in Europe,
    through a tender offer worth about 730 million euros (some 100 billion
    yen) to create a global leader in the printing industry.In what will be
    Canon’s largest merger and acquisition, the Japanese company said it
    will buy all outstanding shares in Oce for 8.60 euros per share.The move
    by the Japanese maker of digital cameras and printers comes as the
    global economic downturn has dented sales of office machines, including
    ink-jet printers.Canon plans to launch the friendly takeover bid between
    January and March with the aim of making the Dutch company a wholly
    owned subsidiary.By putting Oce under its wing, Canon officials said the
    Japanese company aims to capitalize on the Netherlands-based firm’s
    strong sales clout in Europe and the United States.As Canon specializes
    in small printers for office use and Oce is strong in the area of large,
    high-speed printers, Canon is aiming to raise its global
    competitiveness by building up its product lineup, the officials said.

    Canon
    President Tsuneji Uchida said at a news conference in Tokyo he sees his
    company’s partnership with Oce as a ”marriage” with a good partner
    that will yield benefits in their printer business.”The products we
    sell and our targeted customer bases are different, so we believe that
    by teaming up with Oce, we can come up with a full product lineup and
    expand our market, and are aiming to be No. 1 in the printing
    industry,” Uchida said.Anton Schaaf, Oce’s chief technology officer and
    chief operating officer, told the same news conference, ”This
    collaboration will significantly strengthen our distribution power by
    combining our sales networks in Asia, the United States and Europe.”

    Oce’s
    sales network has spread to more than 30 countries, mainly in Europe
    and the United States, with about 40 percent of its revenues coming from
    the United States. Founded in 1877, Oce’s 2008 revenues were roughly
    2.9 billion euros.Uchida did not give numerical targets for profit or
    sales following the takeover, simply reiterating that the two companies’
    products and services are ”complementary.”He said it will take about
    three years for the synergy effect of their integration to be translated
    into revenues.Canon has reported its group net profit and sales for the
    last business year to December fell 36.7 percent to 309.15 billion yen
    and 8.6 percent to 4.09 trillion yen, respectively, marking their first
    drops in nine years partly due to falling demand amid the global
    economic slowdown.

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