News

At last weekend’s BAPC conference I witnessed a terrifying presentation that outlined the worst-case scenario of the current economic downturn.

Tony Travers of the London School of Economics explained, thankfully in layman’s terms, just what could happen if the government bailouts and interest rate cuts don’t work: in short, 10 years of zero economic growth or ‘stagflation’.
The ‘good’ news is that he thought there was only a 10% chance that this would happen and that the most likely outcome would be negative growth (AKA recession) throughout next year, with the back-end of 2010 showing the first signs of recovery.

Of course he had a caveat (in case his predictions prove to be wrong) and that was that economists are finding it impossible to predict what will actually happen, and that the economy is completely in the hands of the politicians and consumer confidence.

And in terms of confidence, it looks like the print industry, even in the face of a raft of business failures, is doing its best to lead the way by focusing on the opportunities in the industry.

The acquisition of GI Solutions Group by private equity outfit Grove Industries, the MBO at print management firm Print Search and to a lesser extent the purchase of book printer Biddles by MPG Books Group all prove that there is money to be had for the right deal.

To be honest it’s a relief to have some positive news to report, after all the doom and gloom of the past few months – and its even nicer to report on M&A stories that didn’t involve any form of administration (although clearly the Biddles deal was a pre-pack, but, to be honest, when a company has a massive pension deficit, I guess, right or wrong, there was little alternative).

Only time will tell how severe the recession will be, but it’s great to see that rather than just battening down the hatches in the short-term, there are still many in the industry looking to the long game in terms of growth opportunities.
And better still some are even managing to do it without conveniently ditching their acquisition target’s debt.