Last week’s deal for the £150m (€220m) turnover Euro-Druckservice, which is a division of German-based Verlagsgruppe Passau CEE newspaper publishing group, was led by chief executive Christian Senff and Alois Bauer. Its value is reported to be in excess of £136m.

Euro-Druckservice has 12 sites across Europe, including three in Germany, one in Austria, five in the Czech Republic, two in Poland and one in Hungary.

It primarily operates in the web offset arena, but also has digital and sheetfed commercial operations.
Nicholas Mockett of Europa Partners, who advised 3i, said: “If you were a UK firm in web offset and you approached a private equity house to fund a similar deal, you would struggle to find a backer, whereas this one, in the markets it operates in, was a competitive process.”

Mockett added that the consumption of printed pages per capita was growing in central and East European markets, in some cases faster than GDP growth.

The deal is expected to complete by May.