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| October 2001 |
Agfa to buy AIIAutologic Information International Inc. -- which can trace its roots back to the earliest days of computerized typesetting -- will soon be acquired by Agfa Gevaert NV of Mortsel, Belgium. The all-cash deal, announced in the last week of September, is valued at more than $45.4 million. The publicly held Autologic Information International (AII) is based in Thousand Oaks, Calif. It has subsidiaries in eight countries and about 370 employees. In the company's last fiscal year, ended Nov. 30, 2000, it had sales of about $81 million. Executives from both Agfa and AII refused to comment on the deal, pending the tender of all AII stock. The deal should be completed within weeks. AII has been 59 percent owned by Volt Information Sciences Inc., a publicly traded company based in New York and Blue Bell, Pa. Volt has four lines of business besides AII, including staffing services, telephone directories, telecommunications services and computer systems. For the nine months ended Aug. 5, 2001, Volt revenues fell 2 percent, to $1.54 billion; it had a net loss totaling $198,000. Volt and all AII officers and directors have agreed to tender their stock to a newly formed subsidiary of Agfa's U.S. subsidiary, Agfa Corp. of Ridgefield Park, N.J. After it receives the stock, Agfa will merge AII with this new subsidiary. The deal also includes AII's subsidiary, Xitron Inc., which is based in Ann Arbor, Mich. Agfa is agreeing to pay stockholders $7.127 per share; in late August the company was trading as low as $2.51 per share. For the quarter ended Aug. 5, AII had a net loss of $353,000 on revenues of $16.7 million; for the nine months that ended Aug. 5, AII had a loss of $604,000 on revenues of $50.9 million. The company did have $14.3 million in cash as of Aug. 5. In a press release, the general manager of Agfa's graphic systems group, Marc Elsermans, was quoted as saying, "In particular, Autologic's newspaper customers will benefit from Agfa's broad range of systems, which include graphic film, analog and digital plates, and proofing systems." Elsermans was also quoted as saying that AII's "loyal and long-standing customer base, especially in North America, adds to Agfa's strong presence in Europe." In a letter to AII customers, President and Chief Operating Officer Al Brunner said, "We remain entirely committed to the newspaper industry and will continue to fully support our customers and products." AII came into being in 1995, when Autologic Inc. merged with Information International Inc. (Triple-I). Both companies had been providing newspapers with publishing system technology for decades. Started in 1964, Autologic pioneered the concept of separating raster image process and fonts from output devices. Triple-I was founded in 1962 as a computer troubleshooting firm based in Cambridge, Mass., adjacent to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus. The business expanded into computer graphics, moved to Los Angeles and in the 1970s acquired the computer typesetting business of RCA, which had developed cathode-ray tube technologies in the 1950s. Triple-I branched out into the development of facsimile-based page transmission systems, and provided pagination systems and display ad makeup systems to papers throughout the 1980s. By the early 1990s, Triple-I was in trouble. A revolt by dissident shareholders put Charles Ying in charge of the company; Ying was one of the three founders of Atex, the legendary newspaper systems supplier. For the next 3¢ years, Ying attempted to right Triple-I, mostly through acquisitions. He bought Xitron (which then built typesetter routers), Camex (the display ad makeup device company), Diadem (the European color imaging company) and DigiFlex (the display ad transmission company). None of this worked. In 1994, Ying attempted to merge Triple-I with Monotype Systems and Berthold, two divisions of International Publishing Associates Ltd. (IPA), but the death of one of the IPA founders scuttled the project. A year later, Ying merged Triple-I with Autologic. Agfa, founded in 1867 as a dye factory in Berlin, moved into the photographic market in 1897, making and selling photographic chemicals and papers. In 1988, the company acquired Compugraphic Corp., one of the pioneers of electronic phototypesetting. In 1996, the company purchased Hoechst's printing plate and proofing business, and two years later the company bought du Pont's offset printing and graphic arts film business, in addition to Monotype's typography business. Agfa has more than 22,000 employees worldwide. Its 2000 revenues topped 5.2 billion Euros (US$4.7 billion). -- dmc
Agfa Corp., The show must go onAcknowledging that many of its members are "reeling from the extraordinary energy required to cover recent momentous events," the leadership of the Society for News Design has decided that its annual meeting is "too important a forum to abandon," and plans to forge ahead with the sessions Oct. 18-20 in Phoenix. In fact, one scheduled speaker, David Handschuh, a New York Daily News photographer, is planning to come to the annual meeting despite the fact that he was badly injured by exploding debris while covering the collapse of the World Trade Center. Other scheduled speakers include:
Other sessions will be held in tracks that include design, creativity, management, photography, technology, infographics and typography. A special track will be presented in Spanish. The meeting will also feature ongoing page critiques for professionals and students; Maclabs, where suppliers will display their wares, and pre-meeting workshops in Flash, ad design and infographics. Society for News Design, (401) 276-2100, e-mail: snd@snd.org. -- dmc Bit bucket ...
"Very much like television woke up in 1963 when President Kennedy was assassinated, the Web woke up with the death of Princess Diana." Organizational men: At the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., Steve Outing has been named senior editor of the organization's web site, Poynter.org. Previously Outing was a consultant and has been writing the "Stop the Presses!" column for Editor & Publisher magazine and its web site since 1995. ... At the National Press Photographers Association of Durham, N.C., Greg Garneau has been named executive director. Previously Garneau was a business consultant; he has a master's degree in business administration from Columbia University in New York. ... At IFRA, the international newspaper technology group based in Darmstadt, Germany, Wim Decluwé has been named a newspaper production consultant focusing on ad processing and color management training; previously he was with newspaper printers in Belgium and Italy. ... New media mavens: Cox Interactive Media (CIM) of Atlanta reports three job changes. Tim Hart has been named to a new position, CIM's director of business development; Hart previously was with LocalBusiness.com and BellSouth, and in an earlier life was an account executive with Cox's Atlanta Journal-Constitution. ... At CIM's BayInsider.com in the San Francisco Bay Area, Matt Konigsmark has been named studio manager, and will serve as the site's primary liaison to Ktvu-TV of Oakland and Kicu-TV of San Jose, both owned by Cox. Previously Konigsmark had been content manager for the site, and in an earlier life had worked as a reporter for Georgia's Marietta Daily Journal. ... In CIM's Northwest region, which includes San Francisco and Seattle, Linda Hansen has been named regional sales manager; previously Hansen had been general manager of BayInsider.com and in an earlier life had been associate publisher of In Pittsburgh NewsWeekly. ... Vendor victuals: At Harris Publishing Systems Corp. of Melbourne, Fla., Donald Haddix has been named a sales representative; Haddix had been with Harris in the '90s and has worked for a variety of industry suppliers. ... At Mactive Inc. of Melbourne, Fla., John Herbst has been named director of business development. Most recently the director of sales at Geac Publishing Systems, Herbst was a co-founder of Mactive's U.S. business and has worked for Gazette Technologies and Harris Publishing Systems. In an earlier life, Herbst was a production executive at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. ... Also at Mactive, Sara Neal has been named an insurance specialist at the company; previously she was with CoreSource and Carelink. ... Lastly at Mactive, Rodney St. Pierre has been named a sales manager, concentrating on Canada; for 26 years St. Pierre was with Harris Publishing Systems and most recently was with Ikon Business Services. ... At Monotype Systems Inc. of Rolling Meadows, Ill., David Ericson has been named Midwest district sales manager; previously Ericson was Monotype's marketing manager for distributor sales for the United States and Latin America. ... At Quark Inc. of Denver, Rick Saunders has been named a senior product manager for enterprise. Saunders has a long and colorful history in the publishing systems world, having started as an engineer at Logicon in the 1970s. He was head of research and development at System Integrators Inc. in the 1980s, as well as head of SII's ill-fated Telcom Division. In recent years Saunders has had a consulting business with Steve Nilan (also a Logicon and SII alumnus) and had worked with SII and Lufthansa. ... At RealTimeImage Inc. of San Bruno, Calif., Bruce Giles has been named senior vice president for worldwide sales; previously Giles was vice president at Printable, and was co-founder and president of Digital Art Exchange (DAX). He started his career in graphic arts at Scitex. ... Confabs: The International Prepress Association's Management Conference -- "A Brave New World: Forging Your Future in Visual Communications" -- will be Oct. 7-10 in Scottsdale, Ariz. The conference highlight will be the presentation of the results of a study of the pre-press industry. For more information, call (952) 896-1908. ... IfraExpo 2001 will be Oct. 15-18 in Geneva, Switzerland. A virtual trade show is also available on the IFRA web site at http://www.IFRA.com/. In addition to a trade show with hundreds of publishing systems suppliers, seminars will be offered on color quality, tomorrow's newsroom, computer-to-plate, digital ad transmission and Macintosh OS X. For more information, call {011} (49) 6151.733-924 or send e-mail to expo@IFRA.com. ... Held concurrently with IfraExpo will be the Beyond the Printed Word Conference, Oct. 17-18, also in Geneva. Speakers will include Howard Finberg of the Digital Futurist Consultancy, Christian Hendricks of the McClatchy Co., Dave Morgan of True Audience, Jim Iuliano of E Ink Corp. and Harald Ritter of IFRA. For more information, use the phone number above or e-mail events@IFRA.com. ... The Technical Association of the Graphic Arts ( Taga ) will hold its annual meeting Oct. 21-24 in Stockholm, Sweden. For more information, call (716) 475-7470 or e-mail tagaofc@aol.com. ... # From THE COLE PAPERS, October 2001 |
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