Excellent backgrounder by Gail on the Bowne acquisition. I think the basic motivation is much simpler...
Corporate acquisitions have never been cheaper, And What RRD has really done is put a major competitor out of business. They bought extremely valuable relationships with the financial services legal community, which constantly needs bailing out to meet schedule deadlines that they naturally abuse. Hence, customer service and sales personnel will be retained. IT folks are needed to consolidate into RRD's proprietary systems throughout the world (even though this is a hodge podge). Production and other overhead won't be needed as work is consolidated into RRD existing plants.
