Goodbye to Steve Vaughan too

(By Richard Holway 9.00am Thursday 10th September) George O'Connor's (Panmure Gordon) excellent morning note today alerted me to the news that another of my friends had tendered their resignation. This time Steve Vaughan from print company, Communisis.

Chairman Peter Hickson described the company's 78% drop in PBT to £1.76m on revenues of £94.9m, down from £148.1m in the first half of 2008, as "disappointing". Communisis shares had crashed from a year high of 55p to c20p (Corrected 10.00pm 10th Sept 09). A sale of the company is now widely expected.

I've known Vaughan for a long time; from his Synstar days. We share a love of gardens with both of us opening for the NGS. He's been at Communisis for just three years. Indeed the early years looked full of promise as you can read in my post a year back - Communisis benefits from financial crisis. Clearly not any more. But we liked his plan to switch from commodity printing to higher value work. But time and "the times" were not on his side.

Footnote - George has exactly our sense of mischievous humour. Commenting on both Steve Kelly and Steve Vaughan's desire to 'spend more time with the family", George notes "while it is likely unbridled jealously on our part that (their) wives and teenagers would like to spend more time with them– mine would rather spend (even) less with me".