Konica Minolta Says It Has No Plan to Counter Oce Bid (Update1)
By Mariko Yasu
Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Konica Minolta Holdings Inc., the Japanese lens and office-equipment maker,
said it has no plan to counter Canon Inc.’s offer to buy Oce NV for 730 million euros ($1.1 billion).
“There’s no plan to make an offer to Oce at the moment,” Minoru Ikehara, a spokesman at the Tokyobased
company, said by phone today. While Konica Minolta had considered an acquisition of the Venlo,
Netherlands-based company, it decided to maintain a business alliance instead, he said.
Konica Minolta may make a counter bid, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc said in a report yesterday.
Konica Minolta, which has a business partnership with Oce, suffers the same lack of scale as Canon,
Wim Gille, an analyst for RBS, said in the report.
“It’s not realistic that rival companies such as Konica Minolta compete against Canon in a bidding war,”
said Hisashi Moriyama, a Tokyo-based analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co. “Canon has a lot of money
relative to rivals.”
Konica Minolta fell 5.3 percent to close at 836 yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, the biggest drop since
Aug. 7. Canon, the world’s largest maker of office equipment, rose 3 percent to 3,470 yen, while Japan’s
benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average slid 0.6 percent.
To contact the reporter on this story: Mariko Yasu in Tokyo at myasu@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: November 17, 2009 02:43 EST