Following Canon’s announcement that it would acquire Océ, WhatTheyThink spoke with a number of sources to get more detail on this significant acquisition and continued sign of industry consolidation. While Canon proposes to purchase Océ at a 70% premium on the stock value, it works out to about 50% of Océ’s annual revenues. The press release is fairly detailed about the terms and conditions.

Jan Hol, Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications at Océ in Venlo was understandably quite pleased about this turn of events.  He said, “This addresses two major objectives with regard to our corporate future which we have had for some time, unrelated to the economic downturn.  We needed to arrive at larger economies of scale and to find a partner that had the financial capacity to invest in new market opportunities in a meaningful way.”  Hol reports that Océ began seeking such a partner in August of 2008 and the negotiations with Canon kicked off in March of this year.

“We discovered that there was significant synergy between the two companies,” he added. “Canon has a huge business in the office and SOHO markets, as well as the printing business, and we have a leading position in the world of wide format and continuous feed printing.  Canon has a huge sales force in Asia, as does Océ in Europe, and Océ’s direct sales force in the U.S. is larger than Canon’s.  This was a forward-looking deal more about business synergy than about cost cutting because of the complementary businesses we each have.”