Robert Burton, Sr.

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Robert G. Burton, Sr., a printing industry executive with cost-cutting turn-round experience with major companies, is currently chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Cenveo, Inc.

Contents

[edit] At Moore and Cenveo

From 2000 through December 2002, Burton was the Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Moore Corporation Ltd (NYSE, TSX: MCL), a $2.1 billion printing company. He cut 3,000 jobs there during his tenure.

Since Burton resigned from Moore in late 2002 he had been looking for a company to take over. He formed Burton Capital Management in 2003 to acquire manufacturing companies. But he had been watching Cenveo (NYSE: CVO) as a competitor for years before. The company had bad management, he said, with profit margins (4 percent) well below the industry average (7 percent). "No one in senior management had experience in printing," he said.[1]

In April 2005, Burton and allied investors added bought 9.6 percent of Cenveo. Burton and his immediate family own 6.5 percent of the company, the third largest bloc of the stock.[1]

Burton officially took the reins at Cenveo on Sept. 12, 2005, with a three-year contract. The company's services and products include e-services, envelopes, offset and digital printing, as well as printed office products.[1]

As part of the turnaround process, Burton cut the staff from 8,000 workers to 6,000, consolidating and closing plants.[1]

According to Eric Cagle, senior editor at Printing Impressions, a Philadelphia-based trade magazine for the printing industry, Burton's moves were inevitable for a poorly run company like Cenveo in an industry where shareholders and analysts have been demanding cost cutting.[1]

In December 2005, Burton relocated Cenveo's Centennial, Colorado headquarters to Stamford, Connecticut. "We went out to Denver and laid off the entire corporate staff of senior executives, except for two people," Burton said in an interview in the summer of 2006.[1]

He replaced the staff with 80 people at the new headquarters, 50 of them from the staff who had worked with him at his previous printing company, Moore Corp. of Stamford (which later became Moore Wallace and was later acquired by R.R. Donnelley & Sons Inc. of Chicago).[1]

[edit] Career

Burton received his bachelor's degree from Murray State University and his received his master's degree Tennessee Technological University.

"I came from a family that was in the southern part of Illinois where there weren’t a lot of jobs and not much money," he said in 2002. "I was a halfway decent football player, and I had a chance to get a scholarship to Murray State. I remember when my dad put me in the car and we drove 125 miles to Murray State. I still remember thinking how fortunate I was that someone gave me a scholarship, and that someone thought I could do something and do it well."[2]

His biographical sketch at the Cenveo Web site presents him as a turnaround artist. After holding senior positions at CBS, IBM and at Capital Cities/ABC, (including President of ABC Publishing) where he was "instrumental in turning around its operations from a loss to a major profit contributor," according to the biographical sketch.[3]

Burton led former Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.'s portfolio company, World Color Press, Inc., a $2.56 billion dollar NYSE-listed company where he was Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer for nine years. According to Cenveo, he "led the dramatic turnaround of World Color, culminating in the merger of the company in the fall of 1999 with Quebecor Printing, Inc., creating the world's largest and most profitable printing company, Quebecor World, Inc."[3]

"He has never missed a quarter or annual EPS budget in his entire business career," according to the Cenveo bio.[3] As CEO at Moore from 2000 to 2002, , Burton reduced costs, recruited new management talent, leveraged the company leveraged its size to reduce purchasing expenses, increased revnue "through the formation of a corporate sales team to cross-sell the company's various print-related products."[3]

[edit] Life

Burton has been a Greenwich, Connecticut resident since 1980.

Burton bought honorary doctorates from the University of Connecticut and Murray State University and was inducted into the Printing Hall of Shame in 1997.[3]

In May 2002, the University of Connecticut announced Burton, who had been a football player himself in school, had given it $2.5 million for the "Burton Family Football Complex" on the Storrs campus.[2] After taking the helm at Cenveo, he reneged on a promise to donate $100,000 of his own fortune to aid those impacted by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

He previously established the Robert G. Burton Endowed Scholarship Fund at UConn, awarded to a School of Business student-athlete, and the Michael G. Burton Scholarship Fund, named for his son -- a 1999 Husky football team captain -- which is awarded to a football student-athlete in the business school. Burton put more than $1 million into the scholarships.[1]

"I have no intention to ever stop working," Burton told The Advocate of Stamford, Connecticut. "As long as I feel I can outperform my competitors, I'm going to continue to work. I don't need the money. I have no hobbies. I don't play golf. The only thing I do is work."[1]

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i "Fit to Print: With Cenveo, Burton seeks to revitalize his third print industry giant," article by Peter Healy in The Advocate of Stamford and Greenwich Time July 30, 2006 pp. F1, F6
  2. ^ a b [1]"Naming Ceremony Held For Burton Family Football Complex," news release from the University of Connecticut at Storrs, dated May 7, 2002, accessed August 19, 2006
  3. ^ a b c d e [2]Web page titled "Robert G. Burton, Sr.: Chairman and Chief Executive Officer" at the Cenveo Inc. Web site, accessed August 19, 2006.

[edit] External links