Sadly, anecdotally at least, that doesn’t appear to be the case. However, the thought that we could be headed towards a second credit crunch is hardly welcome news.
Especially when many started to think that things were, in terms of confidence at least, improving. So any talk of a second recession, and that’s all it is at this stage – talk – is hardly welcome.
But while a plunging FTSE is not what anyone needs right now, there are still glimmers of hope in print and IOS’s deal to buy Lateral Group, creating a £150m group that could well be nudging the Top 10 in PrintWeek’s annual Top 500, is one such example.
Of course, there had been rumours that a PE-backed MBO was on the cards for Lateral, so in some respects the deal came a little out of leftfield – but I guess any deal that could potentially laden the firm with a high level of debt wasn’t such a great idea, especially in the present economic circumstances.
However, there’s no getting away from the fact that a deal of this size, especially when you look at it in the wider context of Williams Lea’s purchase of Tag and Walstead’s consolidation moves in the web offset sector, proves that the smart money still believes that print has a strong and vibrant future.
Which proves there’s still hope that the positive thinkers will win out – and perhaps lenders will start to look at print in a different light as a result.
Darryl Danielli is editor of PrintWeek
New slump or not, print has a bright and vibrant future
You would assume, with all this talk of credit crunch 2.0, largely fuelled by the eurozone sovereign debt crisis, that unbeknownst to us all credit crunch 1.0 did actually end and the banks were right in claiming lending to SMEs had actually eased.
