The liberated Lexmark International Inc is becoming more and more of an embarrassment to its erstwhile parent, IBM Corp. When IBM cut the business off as a leveraged buy-out, it made sure that the company was encased in a concrete overcoat of debt, making it well-nigh certain that it would sink without trace as soon as it lost the benefit of IBM patronage for its keyboards and printers. Instead, the company has chipped relentlessly away at its debt, so succesfully that it now feels ready to make an initial public offering, on Friday it will announce that Fujitsu Ltd is to market its injet printers in Japan, and yesterday, it came in with a further embarrassment for IBM. Where IBM is closing plants on two continents, Lexmark announced yesterday that it is to create 500 jobs over three years in Scotland, investing $42m to establish a 90,000 square foot plant in Rosyth, Fife to make colour and monochrome inkjet cartridges. It is also creating up to 1,000 jobs at its main plant in Lexington, Kentucky in more inkjet cartridge capacity.
