Giant Quad/Graphics Inc. buys Montreal-based Worldcolor Press

[This post has been updated] Quad/Graphics Inc, has agreed to buy magazine printer Worldcolor Press Inc. of Canada, which prints magazines such as Time and Cosmopolitan.The sale price is about $1.3 billion. According to a story published on Bloomberg.com, the merged company, which will be publicly traded, will have 30,000 employees and combined sales of $5.1 billion.

Joel Quadracci, Quad/Graphics’s chief executive officer, will lead the new company as chairman, president and CEO, the company said.

“We will enhance our leadership position in the printing industry,” Quadracci said in the statement.

Shareholders of Worldcolor, which is based in Montreal (and until recently was called Quebecor World), will own about 40 percent of the combined company, the statement said. The Quadracci family will control the company through ownership of its Class B shares. Quad/Graphics will distribute $140 million in cash to its shareholders, the company said.

Quad/Graphics has $1.2 billion of financing from JPMorgan Chase & Co. and U.S. Bancorp to fund the acquisition and cash distributions and to refinance borrowings, the company said.

[Update: “I don’t see this as good news for magazine publishers as it will further reduce competition which may lead to higher print prices,” Bradner Smith & Company publication papers vice president Dan Walsh[told Folio: magazine]. “I would also not be surprised to see some Worldcolor plants shut down over the next year as a result of this purchase.”

The board of Worldcolor had turned down a $1.8 billion offer from another printing giant, R. R. Donnelly, last summer.]

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