Mitchell has become the chairman of the retail marketing group, and his buy-in team includes former Astron colleagues Trevor O'Reilly and Alistair Stewart, who have also both joined the Bezier board.

Bezier's former chief executive Mark Shaw remains with the company as a director and is also part of the MBI. The deal is effective from 5 November.

Private equity firm MidOcean Partners, which acquired Bezier just over four years ago in a £77m deal, retains a substantial stake in the business and also contributed, along with the MBI team, to a £6.5m injection of fresh equity as part of the financial restructuring.

Mitchell described it as "a fantastic opportunity to build a world-class business", and praised the group's existing operations as a solid platform to build upon.

Bezier employs 950 staff across nine sites and group turnover is expected to be near to £100m in the current financial year.

Mitchell has a number of non-executive roles within print-related businesses, but the Bezier deal marks a substantive return to print for one of the industry's most successful entrepreneurs.

Mitchell left the print industry in April 2006, a year after completing the £520m sale of Astron to RR Donnelley.

For more see this week's PrintWeek.