Bob Burton

STAMFORD, CT—MeadWestvaco Corp. (MWV) has agreed to sell its Envelope Products Group to Cenveo Inc., based here. The divestiture of the Envelope Products Group, which is part of MWV's Consumer & Office Products business, will better position the business for continued growth and success. The sale is expected to close at the end of 2010. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

IF THIS magazine chose to hand out an award for the biggest newsmaker of the year, the 2008 honor would go to Quebecor World (QW), hands down. One might contend that the attention, while merited, is not the type of exposure a company would want: Financing issues, trying to sell an unprofitable venture and muddling through with bankruptcy in two countries. But Quebecor World is a printer for our economic times, the No. 2 in North America at a time when market leaders (Circuit City, AIG, Lehman Bros.) have come crashing down.

BACK IN August, we ran a cover story on industry veterans and featured some of their memorable stories, an idea we’d like to repeat for a future issue. Or, we’ll just call Jesse Williamson and ask him to spin a few yarns. The president of Williamson Printing in Dallas is an honest and open man, one of the more colorful and charismatic figures in the printing industry. The stories other people tell about Williamson are pretty amusing, and almost as good as those he tells on himself. Too bad we can’t tell them all, but a funny one appears in his Hall of Fame

CONVENTIONAL INDUSTRY wisdom seemed to favor large, publicly traded commercial printing enterprises. They operated with lower cost structures than their often smaller, privately held competitors, in part due to their ability to negotiate better prices for consumables like paper and ink, along with company healthcare and operating insurance premiums. They maintained deep pockets to fund continuous capital improvement expenditures for the most automated machinery and workflow platforms available, enabling higher job productivity and better employee utilization company-wide. They leveraged their ability to cross-sell products and services to a diverse customer base within a bevy of markets. They attracted the best talent; people sought them

Burton: A White Knight Or a Corporate Raider? If television network executives were planning to cast a reality show for the graphic arts industry, Bob Burton would surely be on my short list. He's quickly becoming our industry's version of the likes of T. Boone Pickens and Carl Icahn who, during the 1980s, dominated the news with their attempts to rest control of underperforming companies and oust existing management they considered inept. On the heels of the failed proxy fight to take over Creo Inc. that Burton launched last year, the former chief executive of World Color and Moore Corp. is now exerting his financial

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