Absolutely intrigued by the Biddles buy-out story, which at the moment raises more questions than it answers. Another pre-pack deal, but this time the buyer is a third party, not the existing management. Does this mean it will be greeted with more approbation than other pre-packs of late? I guess that will depend upon the value of the debt that has been dumped, and how badly burned its suppliers are.

The other interesting aspect is whether the sale of the Biddles assets to newly-formed MPG Biddles will get anywhere near meeting said liabilities. It raises one of the (many) issues attached to pre-packs, which is the lack of visibility - might AN Other book printer have offered more for the assets if they'd known it was for sale debt-free and had the opportunity to put a bid in themselves? We will never know.

I must emphasise that I don't think that all pre-pack deals are automatically bad, just as not all CVA deals are bad - I was recently talking to a director whose company had experienced cashflow problems after being hit with a series of unexpected knocks that were beyond its control. A CVA deal was agreed and stuck to, creditors were paid off, and the firm emerged a stronger and better-run business as a result. Unfortunately such outcomes seem to be the exception, rather than the rule.

What is certain is that we will see more and more of these pre-pack deals. At the Vision in Print conference last week several delegates commented on the fact that it is now commonplace for business owners to be proactively contacted by financial practitioners offering to make all their problems go away by setting up a nice pre-pack deal. Which then, of course, becomes someone else's problem.

Lastly, as Biddles has been loss-making for years I assume Tony Chard and his team are equipped with some of those special underpants to be worn over trousers.