Mr. Finkbeiner, we went through a financial crash, lost sales, production cutbacks, reduced working hours, rumors about a company merger and failed takeover deals—the past 24 months had it all. Which one of the decisions you faced were the hardest to make from a personal perspective?
First and foremost, there were the unavoidable staff adjustments. But we could not sidestep the issue, although nobody liked to go through with it. Terminating takeover talks with WIFAG wasn’t an easy one for me, either.

There was some tongue-wagging claiming the failed takeover talks with WIFAG were no more than a publicity stunt which in the end did damage to the company’s image. How do you see it?
No, this is definitely not our style. We negotiated in good faith with WIFAG and were on course toward a satisfactory conclusion when we regrettably had to break off the negotiations.

Unlike other industry sectors, the subject of consolidation does not seem a realistic solution for vendors of printing presses; or are you still reviewing, together with Allianz Capital partners, alternative takeover opportunities to speed up manroland’s growth?
Consolidation is essential and will be with us soon. We are always on the look-out for interesting opportunities, such as they arise.

Would it be a conceivable option to adopt robust Chinese “parents”, as exemplified by the Goss takeover, now 100% owned by Shanghai Electric?
We are in the fortunate situation to already have strong parents with ACP and MAN.