Strange doings in a volatile time on the industrial heights of the graphic arts:

• For the first time in many decades, what had been huge, stable, even sleepy blocks of stock in two historic giants of German press manufacturing abruptly appear on the market, and change hands. The last time majority ownership in one of the giants, market leader Heidelberg, changed was well over half a century ago. At MAN Roland, traditionally the world’s second biggest press maker, it had been over 160 years.

• Within a tumultuous three-year period, all of the "Big three" press makers—Heidelberg, MAN Roland and Koenig & Bauer (KBA), which cumulatively sell two-thirds of the world’s sheetfed presses—dramatically restructure their manufacturing, their labor agreements, their sales, and their product lines.