HP board asks shareholders to reject Xerox buyout offer

NORWALK, Connecticut and PALO ALTO, California — The board of HP Inc. (NYSE: HPQ) unanimously asked shareholders not to cede their shares in the hostile takeover of Xerox Holdings Corp. (NYSE: XRX).

In the latest chapter of the ongoing saga that would affect one of Fort Collins’ legacy tech employers, HP’s board repeated previous arguments that Xerox’s takeover offer wouldn’t provide better value than HP could on its own and said the debt Xerox would have to take on to finish the buyout would jeopardize a combined company.

Xerox began a tender offer to buy all shares outstanding in HP earlier this month at an estimated cost of $35 billion, months after it first made an unsolicited bid to buy the computing company. HP set up a “poison pill” shareholder rights plan and announced plans to buy back almost half of the company’s shares over the next two years in response.

Xerox is also asking HP shareholders to vote in a new slate of board members in favor of allowing the Xerox takeover.

The Palo Alto-based HP has long been a major tech employer for the region, once employing thousands in Loveland and Greeley before slowly shrinking its footprint to just one office in Fort Collins. About 600 people work at the Fort Collins office, according to estimates from LinkedIn data.

HP Enterprise Inc. (NYSE: HPE) also has offices in Fort Collins and Boulder, but is a separate company spun off years ago from HP Inc.

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