General Electric, the US conglomerate, yesterday agreed to acquire a large part of the equipment leasing business of IKON Office Solutions, the US copier and printer distributor, for about $1.5bn.
The acquisition by GE's vendor financial services group, which has about $26bn in assets and is part of GE's commercial finance unit, marks another step in GE's move to invest in commercial lending businesses.
It comes a year after GE deepened its financing relationship with Xerox, signing an eight-year deal to provide up to $5bn of backing for new equipment leases for the struggling copier company. GE began its partnership with Xerox about two years ago to co-manage Xerox's back-office operations.
Under the deal, GE will acquire IKON's $1.8bn equipment leasing portfolio, which represents about two-thirds of the group's leasing business.
