KBA's new president and CEO Helge Hansen certainly isn't backward in coming forward with some forthright opinions. The sideswipes at Heidelberg came thick and fast in his commentary at KBA's AGM last week.
That both KBA and Manroland have now publicly stated they will not be applying for state aid is pretty significant. Both, like Heidelberg, have high fixed costs and have seen incoming orders fall off a cliff, so it will be interesting to analyse the whys and wherefores of all of this when financial reports allow. Was Heidelberg scuppered by its sheer size? To be eligible for the German assistance package a company's problems have to be deemed not to pre-date the financial crisis, so someone somewhere has decided that Heidelberg's didn't. Some in this industry beg to differ on that point.
Meanwhile, one of our other press suppliers has quietly found assistance further afield. A change in ownership structure at Goss International means that Shanghai Electric will up its stake in the business and become the second largest shareholder. Whether this move will ultimately pave the way for majority shareholder MatlinPatterson Global Opportunities Partners to exit from its investment remains to be seen. If that happens Goss could become the first major press manufacturer to be Chinese owned.
Assuming the deal goes through (it's still subject to government approval), what it will mean more immediately is that Goss will have access to the additional financial resources necessary to restructure its French operations, a job that is long overdue. I just re-read a piece from 2004 when Goss bought Heidelberg's web business, and MatlinPatterson was describing the two French plants as "an issue" back then. With my cynic's hat on I say the difficulties in fixing the French businesses have come at the cost of yet more job losses here in the more expedient UK.
I wonder too what this will mean for Heidelberg's legacy stake in the Goss business? It was last listed as an investment of circa €14.3m. Mere bagatelle in the scheme of an €850m refinancing package, I know, but these days surely every euro counts.
