Jarrold Printing, Alden, JW Arrowsmith, Sessions of York... and now Pindar. What a depressing roll call. It's sad when any business hits the buffers, but there's something particularly depressing about a long-established family firm going under.

When news of the Pindar print businesses being put up for sale emerged earlier this month I happened to be talking to the boss of another family-owned company. He said that contemplating the situation that has unfolded at Pindar "is the sort of thing that keeps me awake at night".

What went wrong for Pindar? With the benefit of hindsight we can all be armchair experts, of course.  It seems to me that four happenings resulted in the business being mortally wounded.

1.    The sale of the highly-profitable PindarSet business to Yell, which exercised its right to buy the operation. While the proceeds allowed the then-?140m turnover firm to pay down some debt, it removed a profitable revenue stream from the group.

2.    The acquisition of Cooper Clegg, and subsequent retention of liabilities that resulted in a ?9m impairment charge. Oof.

3.    The loss of the Avon contract to RR Donnelley.

4.    The overwhelming burden of the deficit (last count ?19.5m) in its final salary pension scheme.

Ultimately the buck stops with Andrew Pindar, and only he will know whether criticism of his personal decision-making, and of the performance of the management team he appointed, is justified or not. I do believe the Pindar family were trying to do the right thing for their employees, and the deal struck with York Mailing for the web offset operation looks like an attempt to secure as many jobs as possible in their home town.  

One of the supreme ironies of the Pindar situation is that events at b?te noire Polestar have provided a template for how it is possible to jettison inconvenient liabilities not once, but twice.

Such machinations are, however, simply not possible when the chief executive's surname matches the name painted over the door.