EDITOR'S notebook

What we'll never know, though, is how much the dissidents' wrangling precipitated the decision by Creo to sell the company. In a conference call held the morning after the Creo acquisition announcement, Ken Spencer—chair of a special committee formed by Creo last summer to review various alternatives for the company—revealed that a review process began last July and that Merrill Lynch was hired as an outside advisor last August. Word of Burton and his fellow dissidents (representing 5.96 percent of Creo outstanding shares) first became public in October. Just when we thought industry vendors might be hibernating for the winter—especially in Eastman Kodak's frigid home turf of Rochester, NY—activity in the boardrooms of companies affected by these blockbuster deals is just beginning to heat up.