With some of the big names in print posting losses or issuing profit warnings, and more potential buyouts and administrations on the cards, December promises to be just as eventful. Stay tuned to printweek.com to make sure you read the latest print news, as it happens, along with all the in-depth coverage and analysis.

Top five most read stories:

1. The top story this month was the sad news that Goodman Baylis had fallen into the hands of administrators just weeks after it and sister company Borcombe SP were bought out by HS Printers. HS Printers faced some hostility following the buys, owing to the bad debt left by former owner of both Goodman and Borcombe, MPI.

2. In second place for November was the controversial claim by BGP that it has the only sustainable business model in the UK printing sector. This sparked a huge amount of comments in the forums from interested, and often sceptical, parties.

3. The third most-read story of November was the completion of the sale of Cooper Clegg. Pindar had announced its intention to sell the company in September due to "unsustainable pricing" issues. Cooper Clegg was sold to a buy-in management buy-out (BIMBO) team, led by 'turnaround specialist' John Wood.

4. In fourth place was the welcome news that Borcombe SP had been bought out of administration by Datateam Publishing. Its sister company Goodman Baylis was eventually sold  to former owners Clive Parkes and Roger Muir.

5. The fifth most-read story of November, was the recent developments occurring at Wyndeham. Most of you had been keeping a keen eye on what had been going on following the collapse of its Icelandic backer, Landsbanki. In this latest twist, PrintWeek reported that, according to sources, a deal could be on the table.

Comments

This month has been a record month for the amount of comments posted about stories in the printweek.com forum. Here are some comments which we felt showed the diversity of topics being discussed throughout November:

"In my opinion this website won't be around long… It's all very well getting printers, who lets face it are a captive audience, but how do you reach your consumers? Google adwords charges a fortune for good ad placement. I sorry but I think it will fail to get the much needed enquiries in the first place."
Inky Fingers comments on the launch of a new online print price comparison website

"'The union has warned that it will not give in to demands that would lead Cooper Clegg to gain an unfair competitive advantage in the industry.' Well if any advantage could be achieved then I think we would all be dancing from the rooftops. What do the union hope to gain? My job is at risk along with 85 others, Jesus, no-one wants to lose their job but let's please get it over with and try to move forward… As a union member and employee, I hope CC will come through this tough time."
Martin Lovatt on Unite's claim that Cooper Clegg jobs were at risk

"I would just like to say it has been a pleasure to work with the printers and other production staff at Terry Smiths and Realisis for the past eight years, and we see no reason that this will not be the same for the next eight years. Times change and management teams react to these changes in many different ways, but we have always found the people there to be honest and produce a consistently good product at a good price on time. In other words the best of British print."
Webmart's Simon Biltcliffe on news that Simpson Group is named as the buyer of Realisis

"Further proof that all is not doom and gloom then. We are also experiencing an upturn in the current market with a strong adoption of our easy to use Web2Print solutions and not just from the UK but the US and mainland Europe where there is great interest in our global language capabilities. Good luck James and well done."
Vpress' Kelvin Bell gives his opinion on news that demand for Claritum procurement software was growing

"All tenders are a complete pain, whether it be for small or large jobs, chargeable or free for that matter. We will not pay to take part, perhaps if no one did, then they would have to re think? The tender process is the worst way to purchase print anyway. The amount of time it takes to fill tenders in, I have to ask myself is it really worth it? If you talk with the end user, assuming you can, they would rather deal direct with a printer, as print is a bespoke made to measure product, not something you can simply buy off a shelf."
Southernprint's Adrian Clark speaks out about the tendering process on the Government website