Canon has made an all cash offer for Netherlands-based Océ, proposing to acquire all of the company’s shares for 730 million Euro ($1.16 billion), a 70 percent premium over Océ’s share price prior to the bid being made official on Monday, November 16 in a joint press release.
The day following the announcement Canon acquired 21.3 percent of Oce’s market shares for an average price of € 8.542 (representing about 16.9 percent of Oce’s total issued share capital).
"Through the merger of Canon and Océ, we believe that we will be able to realize clear benefits, not only in the area of R&D, but also in terms of product mix and marketing and are confident that this winning combination will contribute greatly to our goal of becoming the overall No. 1 presence in the printing industry," noted Canon’s president and COO Tsuneji Uchida in the official release.
Tsuneji Uchida, Canon president and COO
In the graphic arts market, Canon continues to operate in the low- to mid-range sheetfed digital colour and monochrome printing market. With the Océ acquisition Canon would gain greater entry into the digital wide-format display printing space and the high-volume transaction printing business with high-speed toner and inkjet printing solutions, an area where competitors like Xerox, Ricoh (InfoPrint Systems), HP (Indigo and its T-300 color inkjet web press) and Kodak (NexPress and Prosper-Stream inkjet technology) are progressing.
In outling their plan, it was announced the Océ brand will remain, and the Dutch operation would become the division of Canon responsible for commercial printing, wide format printing and business services worldwide. The integration plan is expected to stretch out over three years.
"This is the best possible combination in the consolidating global printing industry and will deliver scale in R&D, manufacturing and distribution," said Océ’s CEO Rokus van Iperen, in the press release.
