In August, John Bruno made the surprising announcement that he was stepping down as president and COO of Xerox. The 119-year-old manufacturer didn’t need to look far for his replacement, tapping Louie Pastor—previously an executive with the firm’s Global Business Services operations—to replace Bruno, who is now CEO of National Veterinary Associates.
Pastor is a graduate of The Ohio State University who secured his juris doctor from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. He began his career as an associate with Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett before becoming deputy general counsel of Icahn Enterprises (noted investor Carl Icahn formerly owned stock in Xerox). He joined Xerox in 2018.
In this edition of Two-Minute Drill, Pastor discusses how his experiences in leading Xerox’s Global Business Services—a support function for Xerox’s customer-facing activities and a vital cog in the company’s Reinvention initiative—will play a role in shaping the OEM as it continues to evolve and move forward.
In less than seven years, you’ve gone from EVP and general counsel at Xerox to president and COO. How do you hope to make an imprint on the company?
Pastor: Throughout my time at Xerox, I have focused my teams on delivering meaningful outcomes that benefit our clients, partners and employees. I’ve learned that real transformation happens when people are given structure, clarity and empowerment to eliminate interference. That mindset guided my leadership of our Global Business Services organization, a key part of our end-to-end Reinvention. With GBS, we’ve streamlined and centralized core processes across finance, HR, IT, sales operations and service delivery by reassessing requirements, deleting superfluous steps, and optimizing and automating those that remain to accelerate cycle time, reduce transaction costs and enable scalability. As we move forward, I plan to apply the same methodology more broadly across the enterprise, empowering our people to leverage technology to make Xerox more agile and innovative, all to the benefit of our clients and partners.
What are your objectives for the first year on the job? What do you feel are your strengths?
Pastor: My primary objective for year one in this new role is to successfully integrate Lexmark. The Lexmark acquisition presents a tremendous opportunity to accelerate our Reinvention for the long-term benefit of everyone in and around the entire Xerox ecosystem. By utilizing a “best of breed” approach in combining the two companies, we’re ensuring the best capabilities we have are preserved, scaled and aligned to our biggest opportunities. This approach leverages my own biggest strength, which lies in breaking down the complex into simple, actionable priorities. Doing that requires a clear strategy, which we have, and a structure built to execute it. Through integration, we are building that structure for the combined company, providing role-based mission clarity that enables our people to go deeper and provide greater value for our clients and partners.
Your background includes a five-year stint as deputy general counsel for Icahn Enterprises, which must’ve been a crash course in financing and investing. Will you benefit from any of that experience’s takeaways in your new role?
Pastor: Absolutely. Experience on the investing side gave me a fundamental understanding of what matters to both the broader investor community and specific types of investors, and it goes far beyond yesterday’s profit. Investors want to see a clear strategy aligned to market trends, rooted in data, together with an execution roadmap that can be tracked and tied to future financial outcomes. Knowing how to effectively communicate our strategy, roadmap and expected outcomes to investors will help ensure Xerox has their confidence and support while we deliver our Reinvention.
With the integration of Lexmark underway and other industry manufacturers positioning themselves via partnerships, what do you think will be the key to achieving Xerox’s desired position within the market?
Pastor: The key for Xerox is to remain laser-focused on delivering intelligent, adaptive, channel-ready solutions that meet the demands of today’s dynamic work environment. We have a century-long legacy in workflow automation and document management, which has given us valuable expertise in software and services. We’ve also recently seen success in partnering with other manufacturers to bring value-add hardware and software to our clients. For example, our recently announced strategic partnership with Kyocera marks a bold re-entry into the high-speed cutsheet inkjet market, enabling us to offer fast, cost-effective business color production presses. This move not only strengthens our production print portfolio but also aligns with our broader Reinvention, which is focused on high-value, high-margin segments. When you add Lexmark’s manufacturing capabilities and hardware to our existing foundational capabilities, we have a real opportunity to expand our reach globally and accelerate growth. And when you factor in our recent integration of ITsavvy, we’re also well-positioned to further tap into the vastly larger IT and digital solutions market with scalable, differentiated solutions in partnership with other OEMs and SaaS providers.
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