Xerox's decision to establish "a multi-project business" in Dundalk and Dublin is a result of its $1 billion cost-cutting, restructuring plan announced in April.
Up to 4,000 jobs are to be lost in the company's European operations, in Britain, France and Holland. Another 4,000 jobs are expected to go in the corporation's US operations, with the balance of about 1,000 cuts to be made in Latin America and Canada.
The total of 9,000 job losses amounts to a 10 per cent reduction of the company's 91,400 global workforce, and is aimed at increasing its competitiveness against rivals such as Hewlett-Packard, Canon and Ricoh in the digital technology sector.
One of the stated objectives of the plan was to "move from country-centric operations in Europe to a more `pan-European' structure to provide more efficient customer support".
Xerox stated: "The company will rationalise and consolidate functions and locations to reduce duplication and to increase speed of response to the marketplace."
It now appears that Xerox is consolidating its European operations in Ireland, and it remains to be seen whether the combination of job losses elsewhere with job gains in Ireland will lead to renewed criticism of Ireland's grants policy from its EU partners.
Xerox's European operations are centred at Grenoble in France, Cambridge, Mitcheldean, Marlow and Welwyn in Britain, and Venray in Holland.
Xerox's chief executive, Mr Paul Allaire, said the continuous adverse currency and pricing climate highlighted the importance of continuous productivity improvements.
Last month the corporation announced the completion of its $415 million acquisition of XLConnect, a leading information technology services company, and its parent company, Intelligent Electronics. It has also continued its policy of disengaging from the insurance industry.
Xerox's turnover in 1997 in the global $220 billion document-processing market was $18.2 billion, up 7 per cent on 1996. The industry, it estimates, is growing at a rate of 10 per cent a year. Earnings per share for 1997 were $4.04. The current share price is about $99.
More than half of the company's plants are in the US. Reflecting a proactive approach to minority groups, the US workforce is about 14 per cent African-American, 7 per cent Hispanic, and 5 per cent Asian and others. Women make up 34 per cent of the US work force. Xerox says that about 20 per cent of its senior executives - 47 of 231 - are women or minorities or both.
Xerox, whose name is to photocopying as Hoover is to vacuum cleaning, began life as the Haloid Company in New York in 1906, manufacturing photographic paper. In 1947 Haloid obtained a licence to develop and market a copying machine based on a process called `electrophotography', later renamed xerography from the Greek words for `dry' and `writing'.
The company became Haloid Xerox in 1961 and was named the Xerox Corporation in 1961.