Thread regarding Xerox Corp. layoffs

Icahn is an opportunist. It was a mess of Xerox' making that put us (the "royal" us) into the position which the company is today.

Xerox is not recovering from this series of mismanagement over the years. Folks have already left the ship as it sinks, more people are offloaded each IRIF cycle to slow down the sinking process. )

There is a life outside Xerox. It is, for some, a painful shift for others it is an awesome experience.

Best advice to those still here, build up your emergency savings (6 months) AND reduce any revolving personal debt (non mortgage) you may have. This will give you some breathing room and lessen the impacts to you or your family.

The day will be coming when you will have the IRIF notice as well and the severance and pension options that are being presented today will only get smaller moving forward. Xerox does the 12 weeks severance to skirt notification laws for mass layoffs. At some point they won't care and you sould see severance go away like it did for a number of CSEs and admins. Unfortunately, those who could least afford it...

UB’s stated goal was to transition Xerox into a services business. She did that by focusing investments on the services side and using the tech side as a cash cow. The multitude of troubled implementations only accelerated this process as she pulled developers & other R&D staff off of tech and moved them over to services to try to save the failing accounts. As time went on we failed to innovate and develop new product resulting in decreasing revenues on the tech side. But the services side didn’t fill in the gap as UB had anticipated. Hence the position Xerox found itself in with both the tech and the services sides failing.

Anne M kept Xerox from imploding from the problems from the 90s. She did make some bad decisions, but she kept Xerox out of bankruptcy and moving forward. Ursula on the other hand, she sunk the company back down. The idea to move into different projects was a good idea, but she went about it so badly and did not look at what she already had that could have been transformed. The board was just as bad. They should have pushed her out years ago instead of rewarding her.

Also put some blame on the press too, they kept promoting UB as a super-star, never mentioned she was ranked as the top 10 bottom CEO's in glass door for years. And the company was not turning around during her time running it.

Become a nuance?

While Xerox's historical leadership carries a lot of the blame, Icahn deserves the anger as this is his MO and Xerox not his first rodeo. He is known to be very short-term focused and has a reputation for leaving is prior 'investments ' as an empty shell with no effective business strategy beyond cutting costs and thus lacking the capital (R&D and production) and talent to be successful going forward.

Icahn uses cash, lawyers, and personality to bully his way into Board rooms and forces them to either give him what he wants or to give him enough cash to go away. He tends to target distressed companies that have a high cash flow and then pushes them to drastically slash costs, especially operational, R&D and human capital, so that the margins are quickly improved, which drives-up the share price.

The problem is that Icahn can’t get his money back from his investment in 2016 in the short-term. Xerox did not invest well in the print and copy market after buying ACS in 2009 and has fallen behind its rivals in a dying market. It is a dead duck as a stand-alone company and merging with Fuji, deal schematics aside, is likely it’s best chance for survival. But, that is a long-term investment and Icahn does not do long-term. So, he found a partner in Deason to execute a coup. This way, he can slash costs to temporarily prop-up the company’s share price and sell now. Unfortunately, these efforts may have been wasted as Xerox’s debt has been downgraded to junk status, which means a significant portion of the cash freed by his cost cutting will go to paying the interest on that debt instead of increasing the company’s margins.

Interesting back story on the Blue Dog! I wish I'd kept some of the posters from the SOHO business.

http://www.wendyrodrigue.com/2010/01/blue-dog-2000-year-of-xerox.html

With all due respect to Anne Mulcahy (not much actually, she had no where to go but up) the company began to fail when we got our hands caught in the cookie jar in the late 90s, a la Enron. You can blame Allaire for that one. When we had to sell 50% interest in FX to Fuji Film THAT is the day we became FOOKED. And why did we have to do that? Because Anne put a significant amount of XRX eggs ($1B worth) in the SOHO market when HP had the market cornered. HP's SOHO market was bigger than ALL of XRX. And we had no clue how to attack that market and take away market share. XRX just couldn't believe that HP was selling boxes at a loss while generating billions in revenue. Simple enough concept but we were FACKING clueless. And don't forget the Big Blue Dog. I bet that artist is still laughing at us for that one. Ursula just kept the ball rolling down hill, just like she learned from her mentors.

Correct - if not Icahn, The prior Board and jacobson would have continued on their $1.8-2.4 billion strategic transformation that was all about cost cutting and massive job cuts.

With Icahn, the lack of fiduciary responsibility by prior board would not have been uncovered, and Jacobson’s collusion with Fuji would have gone unpunished. All Fuji wanted to do is protect manufacturing jobs. With new Board, shareholders are likely to do better and job cuts done less on protecting the politically connected.

Had Fuji acquired control by paying no money, the share price would have ranked as al the value was directed to Fuji in my view.

$40 per share or more would be great for all and for those employees that remain.

I know when people are mad they want to direct their anger at something/someone. But, I would say Carl Icahn is misdirected anger. Xerox was imploding way before Carl Icahn got involved. The day Anne Mulcahy left and put Ursula (an engineer) at the helm (July 1, 2009) was the beginning of the end. It has taken 9 years of terrible management and direction to get us to this point. Carl Icahn simply noticed there was a great company that was poorly managed and therefore undervalued. Yes, he will make his money one way or another...but, that isn't his fault. People who lost their job last Thursday would have lost them one way or another (if Icahn was involved or not)...the trajectory of the company was determined 9+ years ago. My hope is that at least with Icahn, those of us who are left will still have something to work for...even if that if for the highest bidder.