John V was fired from HP and now he had Xerox pursuing buying them? What is it with former HP executives and potential retribution agendas. Remember Antonio Perez trying to turn Kodak into a printing company after he left HP?
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Totally agree with 1zpw. This is a d–k move from Icon to force HP to make an offer. He wants to get out of xrx NOW!
Assuming he is actually trying to acquire HP. Read the analyst report that was on Barron's and some other news sites. The one referenced in another thread about trying to goad HP into acquiring Xerox.
The analyst in question proposes that this is Icahn's way of forcing HP to acquire Xerox. Remember that HP and Xerox have had several discussions in the past few years, but HP always backs out. Further, HP's new CEO had only officially been on the job a few days when Xerox sent the acquisition notice. The proposal has Visentin running the new company and presumably has Icahn's people on Xerox's board having positions on the new board. If you're HP's new CEO and their Board, do you really want to put the Xerox proposal to a shareholder vote and risk losing your jobs? You can't just dismiss it - Icahn knows how to force a vote. Backed into a corner, HP issues counter proposal to acquire Xerox, which everyone gladly accepts knowing there is no long runway for this company.
As for JohnV, he has a clause in his employment contract that vests his shares immediately upon change of control. He retires with tens of millions in vested shares in the new company. Presumably Steve B. has a similar clause. Icahn gets the sale at his price. Everyone wins accept for the employees of both companies.
He has lived no pain. He's been laughing all the way to the bank for years.
So John V took the fall for previous management mistakes. He was not decision maker who made the deal. He was decision maker who said it was flawed. Tells me he has lived the pain being held accountable for being the messenger of delivering the bad news.
Good question. That's exactly what happened at Kodak. Perez was bent on proving them wrong. Could be the same here.
JV was 'let go' by Meg Whitman to “to pursue other interests" in the middle of 2012 after the HP Enterprise division he was in charge of had to write-off $8 Billion in value and laid-off 27,000 employees (sound familiar?). Read between the lines as you may...
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/08/hp_eds_writedown_services_exec_changes/
From that debacle, he was ended-up at Apollo Management, a hedge fund, and through them became the CEO of Pitney Bowes's Management Services, i.e. Enterprise Services, at the end of 2013 when it was separated in a new company called Novitex. Less than 6 months later, Novitex merged with 3 other companies resulting in a new company called Excela Technologies and JV was retained as an advisor.