According to a report on Bloomberg.com, “people with knowledge of the matter” have said Xerox is in talks to buy the $11.6bn (£8.8bn) turnover, US-headquartered RR Donnelley.
Bloomberg said that the talks are at an early stage, but the deal could be completed before Xerox splits into two businesses at the end of the year.
If the talks are successful Bloomberg said that Xerox would buy RR Donnelley and merge some of its operations with its post-split $11bn (£8.4bn) document technology and graphics business, Xerox Corporation, and the rest with its $7bn BPO business, Conduent.
At the close of trading yesterday, Xerox had a market capitilisation of $9.6bn, compared with RRD at $3.9bn.
If the deal were to complete, it would mean RR Donnelley would drop its own plan to split its business.
It announced last summer that it planned to split the business into three seperate entities: $7bn turnover multi-channel marketing communications business RR Donnelley & Sons Company, which includes BPO, logistics, and variable printing including commercial and digital print; $3.5bn turnover print management and supply chain solutions business LSC Communications, which includes the printing of books, magazines and catalogues, inserts, and directories; and Donnelley Financial Solutions, the $1bn turnover financial communications specialist.
At this stage it is unclear if the reported talks are related to the entire RR Donnelley business or just the RR Donnelley & Sons Company operation.
Xerox itself is also on the verge of splitting into two seperate companies by the end of this year and last month it announced the new names and chief executives of the two businesses.
The document technology and graphics business Xerox Corporation will be headed by Jeff Jacobson as chief executive with Xerox’s current chairman and chief executive Ursula Burns as chairman.
BPO business Conduent will be headed by new chief executive Ashok Vemuri.
At the time of writing, neither Xerox or RR Donnelley had released a statement on the speculated merger.
