Re: Has this ever worked?
Yes. Industry consolidation acquisitions, where the industry itself is shrinking (or at least not growing) and one of the companies involved is very clearly not going to be a long term survivor in its segment.
HP (the combination of HP Ink and HPE) was very, very good at industry consolidation acquisitions, however painful those may be to the employees and to the communities which are affected.
It strikes me as chutzpah on Xerox's part to take the role of hostile acquirer, rather than has been acquiree. I hope that if this moves forward the institutional knowledge of the "clean room" process used in the HP/Compaq merger is applied in the same evenhanded and objective (and make the damn decision now so we can tell our customers and people on day 1 what's happening) way it was 20 years ago.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
