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Sunday, October 28, 2012

Was Ricoh USA in fact absorbed by IKON?




 
We're going to take you way back to December 2nd of 2007 when I posted this poll Print4Pay Hotel forums Who is Going to Acquire Who in 08! .

The Print4Pay Hotel forums is for anyone who is in the office equipment business, we have over 2,000 registered global members. We share infomation and news in a secure format via our forums. To date we have almost 40,000 threads related to the industry.  I like to call it the wiki notes  of the copier industry for the last ten years.

On with the poll question.

Who is going to Buy Who in 2009:
 
The results were:
18%   for Ricoh to buy Ikon
18%   for Canon to buy Ikon
55%   for HP to buy Ikon
0%    for Ricoh to buy Danka
2%    for Canon to buy Danka
0%    for HP to buy Danka

Plus these two threads:

Could the writing be on the wall???Always give a second look at a company when they start to buy back their own stock!  IKON Office Solutions (NYSE: IKN) 23% HIGHER; announced that its Board of Directors has approved the repurchase of $500 million of its common stock. IKON intends to repurchase up to $295 million of its common stock through a modified "Dutch Auction" self-tender offer at a price of not less than $13 per share or more than $15 per share (posted by yours truly).



And then this infamous post "Ricoh Buying IKON? c'mon folks.... Ricoh is tooo screwed up to pull that one off."

We all know the end of the story right?   Well, maybe we don't.......I'll make this kinda quick to so I can get to my point.  When Ricoh and Ikon started their transition phase a few years back, many us of were alarmed that key Ricoh USA employees were replaced by the management team from Ikon, as a matter of fact when you looked at all of the new appointments it read as the who's who book of IKON execs at Malvern, PA.  Many of us wondered way would Ricoh jp allow IKON execs to move into top tier positions at Ricoh Americas when they couldn't even turn a profit at IKON.



So thereafter were heard about the IKON comp plan being instituted for RBS sales people, not long after that a few of us got some digital files from corporate where on the first page they were labeled as Ricoh and on other pages the file had IKON on it. It was noted that these files were original IKON files and were being converted for use Ricoh products. Not a big deal here but it opened a few eyes and certain people started questioning who bought who.

As a matter of fact could a back room deal have been cut that allowed the IKON execs to transform to the Ricoh Americas positions?  It was certainly beginning to look that way.

Now, for the last year or so a persistent rumor on the Print4Pay Hotel forums (we know rumors right, some come true and some don't, however I'd have to admit that most of the rumors on the print4pay hotel forums became fact) that Ricoh Americas would dub Malvern, PA as the headquarters for Ricoh Americas.  I actually thought that this would be one of the rumors that didn't pan out, however I caught a write up on the forums that stated Ricoh renews lease in Malvern, establishes its U.S. HQ.   I thought son a ^&%$#, it happened!  Actually, we had an analyst catch this release and they posted it on forums.  The thread read "I guess this is a good 'told you so' moment for a lot of you".

With this last IKON thingy, sorry meant Ricoh, it seems indeed there may have been a backroom deal cut a few years ago. We'll never get the details, but you be the judge.  Funny how most of these rumors come true.  BTW, there's some new rumors about Sharp and they are from good sources.

-=Good Selling=-
 





     

 

 

 


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