Ricoh to Buy IBM’s Business-Oriented Digital Printer Operations

By Kyodo News International, Tokyo

Jan. 25–TOKYO — Ricoh Co. said Thursday it will acquire International Business Machines Corp.’s business-oriented digital printer operations in the next three years in an attempt to sharpen its global competitiveness.

Ricoh will spend a total of about $725 million for the acquisition.

With the purchase, the Japanese office equipment maker is expected to secure the top spot in the field of digital business printers, which are connected to companies’ internal systems to print such documents as slips and invoices in large volume and at high speed.

To begin with, the two companies will form a joint venture, called InfoPrint Solutions Company in the state of Colorado in the United States between April and June this year.

Ricoh initially will acquire a 51 percent stake in the joint venture and the rest will be held by IBM.

Then, over the next three years, Ricoh said it will progressively acquire the remaining 49 percent to make the joint venture a wholly owned subsidiary.

The joint venture is based on IBM’s Printing Systems Division, which generated about $1 billion of revenues in 2006.

Ricoh, headquartered in Tokyo, plans to make the printing business into its second most important operations after its key copy machines.

To focus on businesses linked to software and computer solution services, IBM has sold its operations related to hard-disk devices to Hitachi Ltd. and personal computers to Lenovo Group Ltd. in recent years.

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