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Chapchal out at ISGI after merger
The man who put together the deal to buy Atex from Kodak (and who subsequently lost Atex to the Norwegian software company Sysdeco) had almost built a new publishing systems powerhouse late in 1995, only to lose control at the last minute. After turning Atex over to Sysdeco last year (see The Cole Papers, January 1995), Chapchal worked out a deal with Integrierte Systeme Grafische Industrie (ISGI) of Eschborn, Germany. ISGI was developed in the early '90s as a publishing systems research consortium funded by Siemens Nixdorf and Hell Graphics. Last spring, Chapchal became a consultant for what had become Siemens Nixdorf-owned ISGI and put together some Siemens Nixdorf PC-based publishing systems products that were shown at NEXPO '95 in Atlanta (see The Cole Papers, September 1995). The products were well received. ISGI took orders from the New York Daily News and the 25,000-circulation evening Reading (Pa.) Eagle. In the latter part of the summer, Chapchal was named chairman of ISGI and immediately set about finding a partner to build up the company. He found one in Italian investor Tullio Ponzi, who in recent years had built International Publishing Associates Holding Ltd. IPA Systems is a holding company that owns Monotype Publishing Systems of Rolling Meadows, Ill., and the United Kingdom; H. Berthold of the United Kingdom; Freedom System Integrators of Wichita, Kan.; QED Technology Ltd. of Cheltenham, England; GB Techniques of Prestwick, Scotland, and Scangraphic PrePress Technology of Wedel, Germany. IPA Systems was created by Ponzi and longtime industry executives Peter Purdy and Charles Crocker in 1992 and '93. Crocker left the business in 1993. Purdy died in October 1994. On Nov. 8, Siemens Nixdorf transferred ownership of ISGI to Scangraphic (a legalistic nicety -- Scangraphic would not take over ISGI's business, and each would operate separately). The plan was that Chapchal would be in charge of the new ISGI, which would incorporate the resources of Freedom Systems, QED and GB Techniques. Specifically, the deal gave Chapchal a presence in the United States, along with a sales force. But within days of finalizing the deal, Ponzi and Chapchal had a falling out. Although Chapchal remains a consultant to ISGI, he is no longer chairman. Along with Chapchal's leave-taking, his lieutenants Ian Anderson and Rod Fenwick -- who had both worked extensively with Chapchal at both Atex and previous projects -- also left ISGI. While no plans for the future of ISGI have been announced, the installation at the Reading Eagle is going forward. As an executive with Linotype in the '70s and early '80s, Chapchal was president of its World Systems Inc. division, with corporate responsibilities in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. In 1984, Chapchal returned to England, where -- in addition to being the chief fund-raiser and chairman of QED Technology -- he was managing director of Applied Research of Cambridge Ltd., a supplier of turnkey CAD systems. Within two years, Chapchal became chief executive of Xenotron Holdings Plc. Xenotron, a publishing systems supplier emphasizing display advertising makeup systems, was shortly thereafter sold to the Hell publishing systems group in Germany. Hell ultimately killed Xenotron and most of its innovative technology. Chapchal then orchestrated the sale of QED to Maxwell Communications Corp. and took a position with Fifth Wave Technology Ltd., a division of Maxwell. He left the publishing systems business in 1991 to run SQL Systems International of Surrey, England, a supplier of asset management software. Insiders indicate that within 18 months, Chapchal turned SQL from a company that lost millions of dollars into a multimillion-dollar money-maker. In 1993 Chapchal began discussions with Kodak about acquiring its Atex division, and put the deal together that December. Chapchal used investors who had been involved in the SQL restructuring. In the course of his running Atex, those investors lost faith in Chapchal, and in 1994 Sysdeco convinced the Atex board of directors to give it an equity position in the company and a management contract. Chapchal then began work on the ISGI project. -- dmc
P.INK Germany enters Chapter 11
The German company that developed the software -- P.INK Software Engineering GmbH of Hamburg -- has filed Vergleichsbeantragung, the German version of Chapter 11 reorganization. This type of bankruptcy filing allows a company to keep its creditors at bay while it negotiates for better repayment plans and/or the injection of working capital from new investors. Reports from Germany indicate that P.INK had been planning on a fresh round of financing from Scitex Corp. Ltd. of Herzlia, Israel -- one of its four owners -- which was not forthcoming. Speculation has implicated Scitex's 1995 third-quarter loss of more than $36.4 million as the reason it didn't make the investment. The loss might have left the company cash-strapped and incapable of honoring its commitment to buy out two of the other three owners of P.INK. Scitex America executives did not respond to numerous phone and e-mail queries regarding the P.INK situation. Scitex, which markets the P.INK product line outside of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, bought 25 percent of the company in February 1994 with an agreement to acquire another 50 percent of the company over a two-year period. The remaining 25 percent of P.INK would remain with its founder, president and chief executive, Andreas Poliza. The 50 percent of the company that Scitex was scheduled to acquire has been owned by the German newspaper publishing group Madsack and a German software company called Rechenzentrum Südwest. Rechenzentrum has owned its 25 percent for only a year. The acquisition of P.INK was engineered by Scitex America Corp. executive Bob Holt, a former editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Holt, based in Bedford, Mass., spent much of 1993 in Hamburg, stopping off on his way to and from Israel to work with Poliza to improve the software and iron out the long-term relationship. Scitex -- both in Israel and the United States -- has gone through massive reorganizations recently. The head of Scitex America, George Carlisle, left the company last summer. In November, Arie Rosenfeld, the president and chief executive of Scitex Corp. Ltd. resigned amidst the fallout from the company's sizable third-quarter loss. Part of the reason for that loss was an $18 million charge for employee termination benefits; many longtime Scitex executives have recently left the company, including Scitex America's marketing executive Ken Hurtabise and corporate communications executive Paul Thiele. In addition, Scitex America announced in August the establishment of a publishing division that would be responsible for the P.INK product line as well as other Scitex products. Scitex has sold the Mac-based P.INK system to two newspapers -- The Sun of Bremerton, Wash., a 41,000-circulation evening daily, and the 63,000-circulation morning Evansville (Ind.) Courier. Both papers are owned by Scripps-Howard. In addition, Scitex smoothed the installation of P.INK at the Toronto Sun and other Sun Publishing Corp. properties (which include the Calgary Sun, Edmonton Sun and Financial Post), even though the Sun papers had purchased the product directly from P.INK in Germany. Executives at these papers were reluctant to be quoted about the situation, but indicated that Scitex had told them, as one said, "not to worry." "We've been told that the worst-case scenario is that Scitex will get the North American rights to the P.INK code," said one newspaper executive. Despite generally upbeat comments coming from customers, and published reports that the staff has "expressed full support for the company," sources in Germany indicate that P.INK programmers are extensively circulating their resumes. The P.INK story in North America is not a happy one: Demonstrated under the P.INK Software banner at ANPA/Tec 1990, the North American marketing rights for the product were acquired in 1991 by the Time Magazine Group division of media giant Time Warner. For the next two years, P.INK America attempted to sell its software to its sibling divisions -- magazines such as Time, People and long-time Mac user Entertainment Weekly -- and newspapers and other magazines as well. The potential customers, inside Time or not, were decidedly uninterested. In 1993, Time shut down P.INK America. It was another year before Scitex made its deal, and despite the Scripps-Howard sales the company has had problems building momentum for the product line. -- dmc
Mark your calendars
-- dmc
Bit bucket ...
New media mavens: At the Knoxville (Tenn.) News-Sentinel, Jack Lail has been named manager of on-line publishing; Lail, the paper's former metro editor, is the longtime manager of the Society of Professional Journalists' mailing list. ... At Durand Communications Network Inc. of Santa Barbara, Calif., Joe Barletta has been named head of the company's interactive community and publishing division. Barletta, the former general manager of the New York Daily News, president of the San Francisco Newspaper Agency, head of Freedom Communications' newspaper division and, most recently, publisher of TV Guide, will oversee the company's efforts to develop on-line areas for newspapers. ... Real bits: At Thomson Newspapers of Stamford, Conn., Steven Strout has been named vice president of information technology. Strout is the former director of publishing technologies at the Ocala Star-Banner and director of information technology at the Gainesville Sun, two Florida newspapers owned by the New York Times Regional group. ... At Thomson's Los Angeles Newspaper Group, Mark Loundy has left as a photo assignment editor to become picture desk manager at Allsport of Santa Monica. ... At Ziff-Davis Publishing of Foster City, Calif., Maggie Canon has been named editor-in-chief of Computer Life magazine. Canon's previous job, editor-in-chief of Macuser, is now held by Pamela Pfiffner, who had been the magazine's desktop publishing section editor. ... At the Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., M.J. Crowley has been named head of the library; Crowley is the longtime chief librarian at the Philadelphia Newspapers. ... And, at the Houston Chronicle, Glenn Carvel, the paper's manager of pre-press implementation and support, is retiring after 43 years with the paper. Taking Carvel's spot: Paul SoRelle, the longtime newsroom systems guy. ... Vendor vicissitudes: At Advanced Technical Solutions Inc. of North Andover, Mass., Jon Daly becomes a sales representative. Daly, who had handled the Tecs/2 line at both Publishing Partners International and Information International Inc., was once West Coast sales chief for Atex, where one of his charges was Ray Toothaker. Where's Toothaker today? President of Advanced Technical Solutions. ... At ECRM of Tewksbury, Mass., Irene Leung has been named Far East regional sales manager; she'd been with Cosa Liebermann Hong Kong Ltd. Also in the Far Eastern office, Raymond Chiu has been retained to handle technical support and training; he'd been with Canon Hong Kong Trading Co. Ltd. And back at the main office, Anthony Manifold has been named to the international trade committee of Npes, the Association for Suppliers of Printing and Publishing Technologies; Manifold is ECRM's director of sales, developing markets. ... At Gannett Media Technologies International of Cincinnati, Kurt Dressel has been named vice president of sales and marketing. Though most recently a vice president of the Bank of Ireland, Dressel had held senior sales positions with Screen USA, Du Pont and Eastman Kodak. ... At PressLink of Reston, Va., Lisa King leaves to take a marketing management position at an educational on-line software company based in Philadelphia. ... At System Integrators Inc. of Sacramento, Jennifer Mitchell has been named director of worldwide marketing; most recently, Mitchell was director and principal analyst of Dataquest's Digital Documents Research Service. ... Confabs: The humongo MacWorld Expo is Jan. 9-12 here in beautiful downtown San Francisco. Keynote speakers include Apple Evangelism Fellow Guy Kawasaki, Adobe Senior Creative Director Russell Brown, MetaTools Co-Founder Kai Krause and a panel moderated by Newsweek Technology Editor Steven Levy that will include Machttp creator Chuck Shotton and CD-ROM muse Robert Winter. Also included are a booth or a thousand and more MacHeads than you can imagine. Call (617) 361-8000. ... The Linotype-Hell Users Group annual meeting is Jan. 10-13 in Phoenix. Included are two "Great Debates": Print vs. The Internet, and Mac vs. Windows vs. UNIX (what, no CP/M?). Details are available by dialing (518) 371-4790 or by e-mailing LHUsers@aol.com. ... Networks for Newspapers, an IFRA Symposium, will be Jan. 16-17 in Rome. Call IFRA in Germany for details (011) {6151} 7005-0. ... Tutorials including "Building Internet Firewalls" and "Creating a World-Wide Web Site" are being offered Jan. 18-19 in Austin, Texas, by Great Circle Associates; more information is available by calling (415) 962-0841. ... HTML and Internet Publishing and SGML Management Strategies are being offered Jan. 22-23 in Phoenix by the Graphic Communications Association; details are at (703) 519-8160. ... Usenix, the technical conference on UNIX and advanced computing systems, is Jan. 22-26 in San Diego. Among the "14 reasons to attend": 21 tutorials; 28 refereed papers; Internet access until 2 a.m. throughout the week; the keynote by Van Jacobsen on Nature and Nurture, the interplay of UNIX and Networking; San Diego in winter. Dial (714) 588-8649 or e-mail conference@usenix.org. ... The Photoshop Conference will be Jan. 22-24 in San Francisco; call (206) 285-0305. ... The annual Harris Executive Seminar on pagination and new media will be Jan. 24-25 in Melbourne, Fla. Speakers include Grady Cooper of Alameda Newspaper Group; Jim Haggarty of the Western Producer in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; Randy Jessee of the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va.; Fred Mann of Philadelphia Online; Joycelyn Marke of the Houston Chronicle's Interactive Division; Barry Mechanic of the New York Post; Dennis Melnick of the Pottsville (Pa.) Republican; Bill Pruitt of Tampa Bay Online, and Bob Ryan of San Jose's Mercury Center. Appearing in a familiar role -- as moderator -- is some guy named Cole. More information is available by calling (800) 832-3932. ... The Michigan Press Association holds its winter meeting Jan. 27-28 in Grand Rapids. Call (517) 372-2424 for more information. ... The Digital Publishing Symposium is Jan. 29-30 in New York. Speakers include William Rosenblatt of Times Mirror; Susan Riker of U.S. News & World Report, and Carl Crothers of the Tampa Tribune. Call (212) 661-8740 or e-mail us002506@interramp.com. ... ComNet '96 will be Jan. 29-Feb. 1 in Washington. Keynote speakers include Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab, James Barksdale of Netscape Communications Inc., Edward Bennett of Prodigy Services and Eric Schmidt of Sun Microsystems. And our old friend Richard Hart (who is billed as the only person to win both an Emmy award for comedy and a Du Pont-Columbia Journalism Award for investigative reporting, and is the co-host of C/Net) will make a presentation called "The Electronic Mall of Ideas -- People Convergence." To converge with these guys, call (617) 551-9800. ... Managing the Digital Document '96 will be Jan. 30-31 in San Francisco. Call the sponsoring Association for Information and Image Management International at (301) 587-8202 for details. ... The 1996 Audiotext Forum will be Jan. 30-Feb. 1 in Los Angeles. Keynote speaker is that audiotext (and weight) expert Tommy Lasorda. Call (310) 724-6500. ... And if you want to attend the best conference and trade show put on by newspaper executives for newspaper executives, try Digital '96, this year Feb. 21-24 in Denver. Lots of good breakout sessions, lots of hands-on training and Tim Gill of Quark as a keynote speaker. Call (513) 728-4671 or e-mail planners@plink.geis.com for more information. ... #
"We want them to pay enough money [to license Java] that it hurts a little bit. It has to be something that you take seriously. For a company like Microsoft, you charge them a couple of hundred thousand dollars, they don't even notice. They blow that much on the fruit for one of their press events." From THE COLE PAPERS, January 1996, Copyright © 1996, All Rights Reserved. |
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