Gerd Finkbeiner

Nearly 2,000 international decision makers and experts from the printing community visited the Océ Production Printing Summit 2011, which took place at the Océ Leadership and Technology Hub from June 7-10, 2011. Future-proof graphic arts applications—such as publishing-on-demand, digital newspapers, magazines, hybrid catalogs and manuals—with promising growth paths were presented together with manroland.

OFFENBACH, GERMANY—In order to enable "lasting independence," manroland announced a corporate growth strategy that focuses on leveraging the dynamic growth in certain emerging markets. The measures will reduce staff levels by about 500, mainly in administration, but are expected to produce 50 million euros in annual savings beginning in 2013.

Despite a 32% decline in sales for the current fiscal year, only Euro 125 million remains of the original Euro 654 million purchase price in 2006. On a net basis, Finkbeiner indicated manroland was debt free in 2008 and state aid from the German government is not an issue for the company.

FRANKFURT, GERMANY—German concerns Allianz SE and MAN SE are paying off the remaining debt owed by manroland, the press manufacturer jointly owned by the two companies. Gerd Finkbeiner, CEO of manroland, told a newspaper here that ownership will replace the remaining liabilities entirely with equity. Allianz Capital Partners, a private equity arm of the German insurer, purchased a 65 percent interest in manroland from MAN in 2006.

Attendees at the 2009 Offset and Beyond Conference, which kicked-off yesterday and takes place through Wednesday, May 6, are taking advantage of the advice and experience of some of the world's top business and print leaders. In addition to Printing Industries of America's stable of experts, key presenters at this year's event being held at Caesars Palace include Howard Putnam, the former CEO of Southwest Airlines. Putnam spoke about leadership in turbulent times.

BIG PICTURE perspective is the ultimate goal of the Web Offset Association’s (WOA) Offset and Beyond Printer-to-Printer Business & Technology Conference. After all, attendees of the printer-driven conference, which takes place May 4-6, 2009, at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, don’t benefit just from talking about web offset, sheetfed offset or even digital printing.