Company Buys Stake in Kinko’s

Kinko’s Inc. said Thursday that the New York investment firm Clayton Dubilier & Rice Inc. has completed its purchase of a minority stake in the photocopy and office services chain for about $214 million.

As part of a plan announced in June, Kinko’s also said it had consolidated 130 different entities operating under the Kinko’s name into a single corporate structure.

Clayton Dubilier & Rice agreed on June 10 to buy a minority stake in Ventura-based Kinko’s. The stake is about 30%, the companies said Thursday.

The investment makes Clayton Dubilier & Rice Kinko’s second-largest shareholder behind Kinko’s founder and chairman, Paul Orfalea, who has a slightly larger stake, said Donald Gogel, co-president of New York-based Clayton Dubilier.

Clayton Dubilier will nominate seven of Kinko’s newly formed 13-member board of directors under the agreement.

Gogel said the investment firm’s plan for Kinko’s was similar to its plan for Lexmark Holding Inc., the computer printer business it acquired from International Business Machines Corp. in 1991 and sold partially to the public in 1995.

A fixture in many college towns in the United States, Kinko’s provides office services, including document copying and binding and computer rentals, usually 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Orfalea founded the company in California in 1970. It now has 850 stores in the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Japan and South Korea, and plans to add hundreds of stores in several more countries in coming years.

Goldman Sachs & Co. bought a small stake in Kinko’s after advising on the deal. Spokesmen for Kinko’s and Goldman declined to elaborate on the size of the investment.