Carl Icahn’s latest missive to Xerox shareholders

Carl Icahn

The billionaire and major Xerox shareholder has penned a new letter to his fellow shareholders, revealing the engagement of an ex-HP executive as a consultant “to explore strategic alternatives for Xerox”.

This open letter, published on Icahn’s official website, is the latest in a series of such missives, penned by both Icahn and fellow shareholder Darwin Deason over the past few weeks, as the pair aired their negative views of the OEM’s proposed deal with Fujifilm.

In the letter, reproduced below in full, Icahn says:

“Fellow Shareholders:

 I am pleased to announce that we have engaged John Visentin as a consultant both in connection with the upcoming proxy contests and to explore strategic alternatives for Xerox on our behalf.

 John is a highly-in-demand operating executive with a superb track record, specifically when it comes to revamping complex operations with prior managerial shortcomings in the IT services industry to consistently drive profitable growth. He previously managed multi-billion dollar business units as a senior executive at each of Hewlett-Packard and IBM and most recently drove successful transformations for Apollo Global Management portfolio companies Novitex Enterprises Solutions (where he was Executive Chairman and CEO) and Presidio (where he was Chairman).

 We believe John has the ideal skill set to help us show shareholders why the proposed Fuji scheme makes no sense and how there is tremendous value potential in a stand-alone Xerox with new management. John will be intimately involved in our outreach over the next few weeks and months as we, together with Darwin Deason and his team, explain our strategy to maximize shareholder value at Xerox.

 We look forward to further introducing you to John.

 Sincerely yours,

 Carl Icahn”