October 3, 2003 -- (WhatTheyThink.com) -- At the IGAS show in Japan last week Bernhard Schreier, Heidelberg’s chairman, discussed ongoing negotiations with Goss and “intensive talks” with Eastman Kodak. The comments were made to a German financial daily newspaper Boersen-Zeitung. Goss Negotiations: Schreier told Boersen-Zeitung that cooperation talks with Goss should conclude by the end of October or the start of November in regards to Heidelberg’s web division. "We are at the stage of evaluating one another in order to find out what kind of combination makes sense." In early September, Hans-Dieter Siegfried, Corporate Communications at Heidelberg told WhatTheyThink.com that the discussions were open-ended with no timeframe for when or even if a deal would be completed with Goss. Several days later Bob Brown, Goss International CEO released a statement acknowledging negotiations with Heidelberg. “We recognize that in a consolidating market, acquisition opportunities will present themselves and Goss will evaluate those opportunities." Brown was former President and CEO of Heidelberg Web Systems. Eastman Kodak Negotiations: In the same Boersen-Zeitung report, Schreier revealed for the first time that discussions were ongoing with Eastman Kodak. The talks involve each other’s equity position in their 50:50 NexPress joint venture. Schreier stated that he could imagine “putting the joint venture onto another footing in the near future." In August, Eastman Kodak realigned its operations and launched a new Commercial Printing business. James Langley, a former senior executive at HP, was named President of the new business unit. It includes Encad and their NexPress and Kodak Polychrome Graphics joint ventures. Antonio M. Perez, Kodak's President and Chief Operating Officer stated at the time that digitally-driven commercial printing is a growing market and is important to drive Eastman’s future revenue and earnings growth. "Kodak has the assets and competencies to be a leader in this market, with our portfolio of intellectual property of printing technologies, our Encad subsidiary, and our NexPress and Kodak Polychrome joint ventures. These will be the foundation of Kodak's on-demand color printing and network publishing efforts." At press time, we were unable to reach executives at Heidelberg, Eastman Kodak or Goss.