Xerox buy of ACS moves forward

Sept 28 Xerox announced it had reached an agreement to buy ACS for $6b of stock and cash. Then for almost three months nothing more was heard, fanning speculation recently that the deal was in trouble. Not so they say. Xerox says it has successfully raised $2 billion in capital needed to buy ACS and that shareholders of both companies will be asked by managements to vote to approve the deal Feb 5.

ACS calls itself a business processes company and got into the toll industry in large part through the purchase of Lockheed Martin's IMS unit in the 1990s. It offers the full range of system integration and customer service  - its greatest strength being in the back office side with some of the largest contracts to handle accounts and customers for large E-ZPass toll agencies.

ACS has a head office in Dallas TX, with its toll people based out of Germantown MD, just "down the road" (as we say of I-270) from TOLLROADSnews.

Xerox have their head offices in Norwalk CT in the New York metro area.

Xerox famous as developer of copiers and printers now calls itself a document management company. With $16b in annual revenue it is 2.5x ACS ($6.5b) revenue. ACS has more on payroll however 76k v Xerox 54k staff.

No word yet on whether the ACS name and logo will be dropped and its corporate presence subsumed into the Xerox name and logo.

An official presentation on the proposed merger is here:

http://www.tollroadsnews.com/sites/default/files/Prsntn.pdf

TOLLROADSnews 2009-12-30