This Blog

Syndication

Tags

Printer’s Devil – it’s in the detail

A match made at Wembley?

Will events at Wembley over the bank holiday weekend have implications here in print? I think they just might.

If the latest rumours are correct then the widely-speculated about coming together of Polestar and BGP will happen sooner rather than later. Stung after missing out on the St Ives magazine division sale, Barry Hibbert and his team appear keen to find a solution to their creaking web offset platform problem sooner rather than later.

Eagle-eyed TV viewers might even have spotted execs from both companies cosying up over a prawn sandwich in the corporate hospitality section at the Champions League final on Saturday. Just fancy that!

Meanwhile, Sir John Madejski was back at Wembley yesterday looking on as his Reading FC team failed to win the match billed as ‘the richest in football'. There will be no Premier League millions flooding into Reading's coffers next season, which would surely have been helpful in the overall context of Madejski's cash-consuming business empire. Perhaps yesterday's game will prove to be his personal tipping point.

I noted with interest that the recently-published Sunday Times Rich List downgraded Sir John's fortune by £25m to a mere £175m. Meanwhile, the reported value of that Premiership status - put at £90m - is not unadjacent to the figure that Sir John has invested in BGP. Assuming that he's had a change of sentiment about selling, what I'm scratching my head about is how a deal could be constructed that would not require him to crystallise an enormous loss on his printing venture. Perhaps it would be possible for him to convert it all to equity, retaining some sort of minority stake and the promise of jam tomorrow in the shape of future dividends.

The other interesting aspect to all of this is the fact that Goodhead has a pension deficit - £8m at the last count, and as Polestar pension scheme members know to their cost, the group's new owners Sun Capital aren't keen on taking that sort of liability on. The plot thickens.

Today is also the end of Goodhead's financial year. I recall David Holland saying that the business would be back in the black on a consistent basis from the start of 2011. If that has turned out to be the case perhaps there's no need for Sir John to sell at all. Let's see.

 

Published May 31 2011, 12:36 PM by Jo Francis
Filed under: , , ,

Comments

 

Chris Lavers said:

I'd be very surprised if Man U and Barça did consolidate.  What's in it for Barça?

May 31, 2011 1:02 PM
 

The Voice of Reason said:

Now if Sir Mad had just put David Holland in goal things could have been very different.

May 31, 2011 1:38 PM
 

NDCT said:

Sir Mad is surely not mad enough to convert debt to equity and then hope and expect that Polestar will come good on dividends or on share values. What sort of historic precedent is there for that - Investcorp was stripped of about £850 million in less than a decade if I remember rightly.

June 2, 2011 11:16 PM

About Jo Francis

Jo Francis has worked in print-related businesses for more than 25 years. Along the way she has been a typesetter, a screen printer, a technical and customer support pre-press specialist, a communications consultant, and an editor. She is a former editor-in-chief of PrintWeek magazine and is currently associate editor of Haymarket's print titles.