Mergers & Acquisitions

Nobody likes interruptions to their best-laid plans, but they happen—and M&A deal making isn’t exempt from them. When something happens to impede the sale of a company, it’s natural to want to proceed with caution until the obstacle is safely out of the way. Sometimes, that’s the correct strategy. In other cases, it can be a mistake.

It’s said that in business, timing is everything. In an acquisition, it’s many things: some of them controllable, others not necessarily up to the principals. Make the deal clock keep the right time for you by being clear about your objectives and reasonable about your expectations.

Fontis Solutions has been acquired by Dallas-based franchisor Safeguard Business Systems, a Deluxe Corp. company.

DOME and American Web have entered into a formal agreement in which DOME will acquire intellectual and physical assets.

Acquisition activity in the commercial printing segment picked up. As we have predicted in our last two annual projections, wide-format printing companies continue to be attractive targets for commercial printing companies which seek to cross-sell the new services into their existing clients. As a bonus, the acquiring company adds new clients for their traditional printing services.

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.

One of the most useful research tools we have at New Direction Partners is our printing and packaging stock index. With it, we track the stock price performance of nine printing companies and the seven top packaging companies from 2006 to the current date. We then can compare trends in the two segments with what has been happening on a more macroeconomic level by looking at them next to the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) and the S&P 500 Index.

NextPage, a printing and marketing firm has acquired Print Big Solutions, reported the Kansas City Business Journal.

The owners of Proforma Signature Solutions have announced the acquisition of Artistic Printing and Specialty Advertising.

Neuger has acquired Engage Print. Combined, the two firms employ more than 25 individuals, and Neuger anticipates employment growth.