Paul Reilly

Any slowdown in the pace of M&As among printing and packaging firms is only temporary. The industry is recovering.

NDP is confident 2019 can be favorable for buyers and sellers of printing companies, here’s what to do in case it isn’t.

Part of a sound plan for launching a printing business is thinking ahead to the future leadership succession plan.

Congratulations — having carefully planned and executed the acquisition of a printing company to complement the one you already own, you’re finally prepared to sit down with the seller to close the deal. Naturally, you’re feeling good about what you’ve accomplished and what the future holds for the merged entity that your effort has created. This is the point at which we always urge our buying clients to pause.

In our recent webinar, we were happy to report that the pace of dealmaking in the industry remains strong.

If you’ve been clocking mergers and acquisitions in the printing industry this year, you’ve had plenty to keep you busy. The fast pace of transactions in 2016 tells us that the market is sound and that many looking for opportunities to buy or sell have had little difficulty in locating them.

Who would have thought that we'd ever be talking about negative interest rates? Now we have to, because in many places, they’ve become a fact of life. While the likelihood of negative rates in the U.S. seems small, the Federal Reserve has said it doesn’t rule out using them for emergency stimulus in an economic crisis.

Let’s review some headline-making deals to see what they tell us about valuation trends and growth strategies.

2015 was the best year of the century for mergers and acquisitions among printing and packaging companies.

Perhaps the biggest piece of news in the printing industry so far this year RR Donnelley’s announcement that it would split three ways.

Paul Reilly and Peter Schaefer, partners at New Direction Partners, discuss why succession planning should start early.

With the right price in place, the investment banker then can market your firm confidentially to multiple potential buyers.

As an investment banker to the printing and packaging industries, New Direction Partners has participated in scores of such transactions. While no two mergers were exactly alike, all of them followed a five-part sequence of events that we recommend as a model to all of our clients seeking to merge with other companies.

There are plenty of good things to say about pride. After all, it’s one of the noble impulses that gets us out of bed in the morning and motivates us to do the best job we can for our customers, employees, and others who depend on us. But when it makes anyone resist the idea that today, every print company owner should be preparing either to acquire or to be acquired, it becomes something else. Steer clear of the trap it can set for your business when your moment of truth arrives.