Xerox lost its fight to keep corporate raiders from breaching it's defenses due to some self-serving moves on the former CEO's part. Now those same C-Suite servants of Icahn are tasked with parlaying their temporary gains at Xerox to much higher leveraged results at HP.
JohnV worries about the house of cards collapsing, so he rejects the due diligence and time-frame requested by HP. The Xerox side also refused a standard non-disclosure agreement so that it could run a similar PR campaign during the raiding of Xerox. Note how uncommonly public these M&A dialogs are. It's because they are propaganda.
It is a terrible development for employees and anyone else with long-term interests in the the success of a company. Time will reveal that Xerox has no substantial investments in making that company a "technology power-house".
Icahn Enterprises has a well established play-book for asset strip a company to return short term gains. Investors might be looking to follow on Icahn's coat-tails, but cronies get first dibs on profits and the rest must contend with the mad rush for the exits. Don't get caught holding the bag.