Year in Review — Big Deals Make Comeback
Facing mounting debt and an untenable renting situation, the Association for Graphic Communications (AGC) filed Chapter 7 liquidation bankruptcy and dissolved. PIA New York State later took over the AGC territory and renamed itself Printing Industries Alliance.
Cenveo went back to the M&A well, plucking Printegra Corp. of Peachtree City, GA. Printegra, a $90 million label, envelope and business forms specialist, brought with it 14 U.S. manufacturing facilities.
The big dogs continued to dominate the news pages when Donnelley saw a change at the top of its leadership. Thomas Quinlan replaced Mark Angelson as president and CEO. Angelson, who took the CEO reins at Donnelley in 2004, helped engineer the merger between Moore Corp. and Wallace Computer Services.
Tragedy struck a California printer when a part-time worker—angered by a reduction of his work hours—opened fire on three co-workers before killing himself. Fortunately, all of the shooting victims survived. The disgruntled employee of Kenyon Press actually shot the three fellow employees who had helped him obtain employment at the custom menu printing operation.
Houston-based Consolidated Graphics (CGX) signed a letter of intent to acquire family owned Hopkins Printing of Columbus, OH. But not every engagement results in marriage; the deal fell through and, by the end of the year, Hopkins Printing devised an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP).
A complaint filed by NewPage Corp. briefly led to stiff penalty tariffs from the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) levied against Asian coated free sheet paper sources, notably China, Indonesia and Korea. From 2004 to 2006, U.S. paper imports from China went from $29 million to a staggering $224 million. However, the tariffs were surprisingly overturned in late November by the U.S. International Trade Commission in a 5-1 decision.
Spring brought tragedy as a private plane carrying five printers crashed off the coast of Florida, killing all on board. The men were bound for a weekend fishing excursion in the Bahamas. The printers were employed by Identity Graphics and Printing of Ft. Lauderdale, FL, and Crystal Image Graphics of Hallandale, FL.
