Literature Review of All Things DonnelleyMooreWallace

The announced merger of RR Donnelley and Sons (NYSE: DNY) and Moore Wallace Inc. (NYSE: MWI) had media from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal to the Chicago Tribune and the Globe and Mail buzzing. WhatTheyThink.com did a quick “literature review” and collected the following comments, observations, and insights.

Donnelley’s home town paper, the Chicago Tribune, opened its coverage with the comment that Donnelley went out last summer looking for a chief executive and got a merger partner’s CEO instead. Apparently merger talks started in August at the suggestion of Donnelley’s financial adviser, Morgan Stanley, according to Donnelley’s soon-to-retire CEO William L. Davis.

Other Trib observations: the merger “includes a recipe for growth in a mature, thin-margin industry.” And a promise to “change the face of the printing industry forever” is described as a tall order for an industry that is undergoing “wrenching structural changes related to the rise of digital communications.”

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