Jim Russell 

I'm Jim Russell, a partner with New Direction Partners and I wanted to talk today a little bit about the benefits that accrue to the person that's doing the talking, or the company doing the talking.

We recently closed a deal; two similar sized companies that came together.  First and foremost, a lot of people always realize their savings in space and these two companies were able to combine into about 60 percent of the space that they were in in separate companies.  So they had immediate savings in rent.

In addition, they went through and kept the best of the employees that they had between the two companies, were able to kind of cherry pick who was the best leaders, the best managers among the companies, who are the best pressman, the best pre-press operators.

In addition, they did similar with the equipment: they kept the best equipment and were able to sell off the excess equipment to generate cash and pay down debt and from the buyers' perspective he was able to do this deal with no cash at closing.  So it worked out very well, grew their sales about 40 percent and were very profitable from the second month after the merger was completed.