Xerox put on hold their HP takeover plan due to Covid-19, adding to the fascinating history of failed takeover bids:
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HP-Xerox Copier maker Xerox announced on April 1 that it is pulling the plug on its bid to take over rival HP – a company that is more than three times its size. With the financial markets catching the coronavirus bug, Xerox said that it was no longer prudent to take on debt to finance its $30 billion bid. HP has rebuffed Xerox more than once, ever since the latter made public its offer in November 2019. Ironically, the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic has hit both companies, with people shunning paper for digital forms of communication.
In February 2008, Microsoft bid $31 per share in a cash-and-stock deal that valued internet company Yahoo! at $41 billion. After three months of wrangling, Yahoo!’s board walked away from the negotiating table. In the meantime, users of its search engine, email and chat services were migrating in droves to new companies like Google and Facebook. Microsoft did not give up. It made a revised offer of $16.6 per share in 2011, only to be spurned again. In 2016, Verizon acquired Yahoo!’s internet business for a discounted price of $4.48 billion, roughly a tenth of Microsoft’s initial offer.
The $4.7-billion deal that would have seen BlackBerry go private came undone in November 2013. (In pic: Prem Watsa of Fairfax)
In 2014, the Toronto-based financial holding company, Fairfax, bid $9 per share in a cash deal for BlackBerry. Its stock price had devalued from $146 per share in 2008 — the year of the financial crisis and the birth of Android — to around $7 in August 2013. The $4.7-billion deal that would have seen BlackBerry go private came undone in November 2013. Fairfax withdrew its proposal. BlackBerry was left at the altar. It has since stopped making phones, shifting focus to enterprise software. Its shares traded at around $4 per share on April 1, 2020.
