HP confirms Xerox offered to buy company

HP Inc., one of Vancouver’s larger employers, confirmed Wednesday that it received an offer to be purchased by Xerox Holdings Corp. The two companies had been holding conversations about merging “from time to time,” according to a statement provided to The Columbian.

The statement did not indicate any decision, but HP said that it has “great confidence in our multi-year strategy and our ability to position the company for continued success,” despite the offer.

An anonymous source told Bloomberg News that Xerox lined up financing from Citigroup for the purchase of HP, based in Palo Alto, Calif. Xerox CEO John Visentin would run the combined company, according to the article’s source, and the merger would save about $2 billion annually.

HP Inc. has two office spaces at the Columbia Tech Center in east Vancouver, and Xerox has a large facility in Wilsonville, Ore.

HP’s Vancouver campus, at 1115 S.E. 164th Ave., expanded to an additional 58,000-square-foot location at 1201 S.E. Tech Center Drive in 2016.

Workers at the Vancouver campus were last known to be part of an effort to bring HP’s 3D printers into the manufacturing economy, a leap ahead of printing prototypes, according to a 2016 article in The Columbian.

It’s unclear how many employees work for HP in Vancouver, but the company had 39 job openings for its Vancouver location as of Wednesday, according to its website. A spokesperson from HP declined to say how many employees work at the Vancouver HP campus.

The latest stock price for HP increased by a hefty 9.4 percent to $21.66 on Tuesday after news of the buyout, first reported by the Wall Street Journal. On Wednesday, HP’s stock settled to $19.57 by the market’s closing.