RR Donnelley

Type	Public (NYSE: RRD)
Founded	1864
Headquarters	Chicago, Illinois, USA
Key people	Tom Quinlan, CEO
Industry	Commercial Printing
Products	Books, catalogs, financial documents, magazines, direct mail, labels, retail inserts, and electronic SEC filings
Website	http://www.rrd.com

77 West Wacker Drive, the former headquarters of RR Donnelley

RR Donnelley NYSE: RRD is a Fortune 500 company based in Chicago, Illinois, that provides print and related services. Corporate headquarters are located at 111 S. Wacker Drive.

[edit] History

The company, originally known as R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company, was founded in 1864 by Richard Robert Donnelley. His son, Reuben H. Donnelley, founded the otherwise unrelated company R. H. Donnelley.^[1]

RR Donnelley's cartographic production facility was for many years one of the largest in the United States. In the late 1980s, the division was spun off as its own company, Geosystems, which in turn became MapQuest. It is now a subsidiary of Time Warner.

[edit] Business acquisitions and mergers

Throughout its history, particularly in the 1990s and 2000s, RR Donnelley purchased a number of other companies outright, steadily increasing in size. In February 2004, RR Donnelley merged with Moore Wallace Inc., keeping the name RR Donnelley as the name of the combined companies. Donnelley went on to purchase OfficeTiger, a major publishing and financial outsourcing company, as well as printing company Banta Corporation in 2007. In May 2007, RR Donnelley also acquired book and educational materials printer Von Hoffmann (and creative/ pre-press subsidiary Anthology, Inc.) from Visant Corporation.^[2] An additional purchase at the beginning of 2007 was Perry Judd's Holdings Inc., a private catalog and magazine printer. At the beginning of 2008, RRD also announced the acquisition of Pro Line Printing, Inc.^[3] As of 2007, RR Donnelley is the world's largest commercial printer.^[4] .

In 2007, RR Donnelley was also named as an interested party in an attempt to purchase Quebecor World.^[5] In May 2009, the company tendered an unsolicided bid to purchase Quebecor World.^[6]

In July 2008, the company established a multi-year contract with F+W Publications Inc., which will allow Donnelley to print a large amount of F + W's book and magazine publications. The contract is valued at about $80 million. ^[7]

[edit] Lakeside Classics

The Lakeside Classics is a series of books printed annually, at Christmastime, by RR Donnelley.^[8] This tradition was begun in 1903 by Thomas E. Donnelley, who was then the company president. The basic format of these books has remained essentially the same since inception, as a hardcover, cloth wrapped and gold embossed.

Subject matter tends to cover elements of American history. Many early volumes contained speeches and writings of noted Americans, including Benjamin Franklin, whose autobiography represented the first ever Lakeside Classic.

Lakeside Classics are never sold and are only made available to RR Donnelley employees, clients, and others associated with the company.^[8] The week before Christmas, each employee is given one copy of that year's volume. As such, the books are very rare, and are in demand on the collector's market. Antiquarian bookstores often have a section devoted to Lakeside Classics, and early volumes command large sums from book collectors.^[8]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official site.