Drea Knufken
Xerox today announced that it will buy IT services/outsourcing company Affiliated Computer Services for $6.4 billion. Bloomberg has more:
The transaction will help triple sales from services to about $10 billion, Xerox said today in a statement. The total price of the cash-and-stock deal is about 34 percent more than Dallas-based Affiliated Computer’s closing price Sept. 25.
The acquisition is Chief Executive Officer Ursula Burns’s first since taking over the world’s largest maker of high-speed color printers in July. The transaction helps Burns expand into a market Xerox values at about $150 billion and gives her a foothold in managing administrative operations for multiple arms of the U.S. government.
Xerox will pay $18.60 a share in cash and 4.935 Xerox shares for every Affiliated Computer share, amounting to about $63.11, based on closing prices as of Sept. 25. Xerox also will assume about $2 billion in Affiliated Computer’s debt.
After this acquisition, Xerox just might start competing with Dell (which bought Perot Systems last week). It’s a brave new world.
