Business Management - M&A

KPS announced in April it was acquiring Thilmany Papers, which has mills in Kaukauna (WI) and De Pere (WI), from Packaging Dynamics. It announced previously it was buying Wausau Paper’s specialty paper business.

KPS now has definitive agreements to buy both operations it said in a statement Monday. The deal is expected to close by summer. “We are very excited to create Expera,” said Raquel Palmer, a representative with KPS, a New York-based private equity firm.

She said the combined operations of Wausau Paper and Thilmany will make Expera a leading manufacturer of specialty paper.

Consolidated Graphics executives provide an overview of their company and examine how changing technologies impact the M&A landscape.

This week International Paper announced that it is in talks with Unisource regarding a proposed merger of xpedx, International Paper's distribution business, and Unisource. So what will this mean?

Would a NewPage acquisition help Quad maximize its customers’ print ROI? Does it help them lower their costs? From my vantage point, it does nothing on to help its customers, and I don’t see much effect on its costs either. We have two mature companies, neither of which has strategies that complement the other, and they’re both looking at a “bet the company” deal. It doesn’t make much sense to me.

Duplo USA has entered into an exclusive agreement with Photobook Technology PBT to distribute the latter’s Mitamax, Mitabook, and Mitacase products in North America. Duplo will host an open house event on Jan. 23-25, 2013, at its showroom in Suwanee, GA, to demonstrate these solutions.

After finally emerging from bankruptcy protection, with a much lighter debt load, NewPage Corp. clearly has merger on its mind. Why else would North America’s largest maker of coated paper choose as its chairman Mark A. Angelson, the U.S. printing industry’s Great Consolidator?

Further consolidation of the paper industry is inevitable, but could Angelson & Co. have something more radical in mind? Like maybe a marriage with a printing company? Like maybe Quad/Graphics, the continent’s #2 printer?

The idea that the two Wisconsin-centric companies are natural allies has been around for years. Quad...proposed an unusual alliance with a NewPage predecessor

EFI has acquired Technique, a provider of MIS/ERP software products for the publication, commercial and direct marketing printing industry segments. The Technique management team and employees will join EFI as part of its Productivity Software Business Unit.

FutureMark Paper Group has been launched as the umbrella group for the two recycled paper producers that previously operated as Manistique Papers and FutureMark Paper. FutureMark Paper Group is strategically aligning the talents of its Manistique and FutureMark Alsip teams to accelerate product development, spark innovation and enhance the business value it delivers to customers.

Only three weeks after Verso Paper’s CEO said acquiring NewPage was the key to its future, Verso announced it no longer wants to buy its rival. Why the sudden change of heart? In a mid-August interview with The (Memphis) Commercial Appeal, Verso CEO David J. Paterson said that the company’s key strategy is acquiring ailing companies “to get the cost reductions we can't get on our own.”

Verso's new tack is something of a mystery. Chip Dillon, a long-time forestry industry analyst, announced yesterday that his Vertical Research Partners is dropping coverage of Verso because the company’s future is so unclear.

Hedge fund titan Steven A. Cohen wants the board of Clearwater Paper to separate the Spokane, WA-based company’s consumer products from its pulp and paper operations so either or both can be sold off, according to a regulatory filing Friday.

Clearwater calls itself the largest producer of tissue paper for private-label brands sold by grocery, drug, mass merchants and discount stores, and is a leading producer of bleached paperboard used in food packaging and commercial printing. It has 15 manufacturing plants in the United States and Canada, and reported second-quarter net income of $21.5 million on sales of $473 million.