New Direction Partners

In our recent webinar, we were happy to report that the pace of dealmaking in the industry remains strong and that opportunities for buyers and sellers should continue to be abundant at least in the near term. How long these conditions will last is impossible to predict. For the moment, though, as M&A advisers, we like what we’re seeing.

My personal involvement with M&As began when I was the president and CEO of a family business that originated as a newspaper publishing company in 1906. During my tenure, we sold our non-heatset web division and after that our sheetfed operation. Later, as president and CEO of the Printing and Imaging Association of Georgia, I worked with a number of our members who were considering M&A transactions of their own. This experience taught me two things.

When a business owner seeking to sell holds out for a higher price than what the market is willing to pay, it often comes at his or her own peril. Sound advice from M&A advisers, based on comparable recent sales, is typically the best way to understand a fair price in an acquisition transaction.

As a trade association president, I knew that one of my most important jobs was to offer our members a friendly, well informed, third-party perspective on strategic business issues. Today, our New Direction Partners clients want the same thing: not just information about the mechanics of M&As, but also a genuine understanding of the industry and the mindsets of the people who own those companies.

It has been reported that last year's M&A boom may be running out of steam. While there's not much evidence of that happening in printing and packaging, any sustained business upsurge may level off eventually.

With drupa 2016 just a few months away, naturally the industry is thinking about the new capital investment opportunities that a show of this scope and size presents.

Who would have thought that we’d ever be talking about negative interest rates? Now we have to, because in many places, they’ve become a fact of life.

Everyone likes a bargain. There was a time when the printing industry’s M&A marketplace was full of them — for all the wrong reasons.

Joint owners will have a little more planning to do in order to be ready for the eventual sale of their company. They’ll need to understand each other’s personal objectives and, once they have that understanding, give themselves time to structure and execute a sale that satisfies everyone.

New Direction Partners takes a look at Jarden Corp.'s acquisition of Visant Holding Corp. and Multi Packaging Solution's initial public offering.