Suppliers Get In on the Merger/Alliance Action

WILSONVILLE, OR—The commercial printing industry's suppliers and manufacturers seem to have caught the merger and alliance fever sweeping the printer side of the business, with a number of major names announcing acquisitions and alliances in recent weeks.

Notable among the announcements was Tektronix, which has reached an agreement to sell its Color Printing and Imaging Division to Xerox for $950 million. Xerox will set up a new business unit that adds Tektronix's color-printing technologies to Xerox's existing black-and-white workgroup printer offerings. Tektronix's color printer operations, with approximately 2,400 employees, will remain in this Portland suburb, and employees of the color printer division will become employees of Xerox.