It appears that Peter Lynch, the former Adare financial director, has had rather less joy establishing a significant business in print than his erstwhile colleague Mark Scanlon.

Just a couple of years ago Lynch arrived at Oakhill Group, now renamed Prime Active Capital, with ambitions to create a £100m print presence by acquiring and turning around under-performing printcos. Wheels within wheels and all that, Tony and Jane Gill (ex-Encore Direct envelopes empire) also have a stake in PAC.

Now PAC is effectively exiting the print sector and its €11.3m turnover PAC Digimedia wing will be no more once it offloads its two remaining businesses: Bell & Bain and Top Copy. Of these, Bell & Bain is by far the more sizeable operation. Given the various interesting ownership changes and/or closures among UK book printers of late, I'm wonder who on earth might be in the frame for this particular Scottish operation?

PAC sold its plastic card business to CPI Card Group last year (not the book CPI, a different one, otherwise perhaps they could have done a deal for Bell & Bain at the same time...), which effectively signalled the end of what was once a pretty sizeable collection of print and packaging businesses.

PAC is now focusing on retail, rather than manufacturing and it also owns 21.5% of troubled marketing communications group Media Square. This seems to be keeping Lynch busy as demonstrated by a recent spat where he attempted to be appointed as a director against the wishes of the board.  

Meanwhile, Scanlon's Walstead Investments has hit £100m through its Wyndeham and Southernprint deals. Funny old world, indeed.