The Big Pulp and Paper Power Game.
West Fraser Timber Co., the world’s largest lumber producer, has spent much of the past decade diversifying beyond sawmills, expanding into engineered wood products and pulp manufacturing while riding the…
Unlock the Sleeping Giant — Break Up the Business Now To the Board and Management of Smurfit WestRock Smurfit WestRock is, without exaggeration, the single most undervalued major industrial company…
Smurfit WestRock PLC’s third-quarter earnings may have missed Wall Street forecasts, but behind the softer numbers lies a calculated, aggressive play that could redefine the global packaging industry’s competitive landscape.…
The containerboard boom with China changed American manufacturing. Its reversal may change it again. For most Americans, the economic relationship between the United States and China did not begin with…
There are moments in corporate history when a board, entrusted with the stewardship of a venerable institution, appears determined to test the tensile strength of shareholder patience. Kimberly-Clark’s eagerness to…
Every decade or so, a corporate board puts its hand on a hot stove, gets burned, and the rest of us get a good reminder of why oven mitts were…
The U.S. went from shipping boxes to China… to shipping them to Pratt. For most of the late 20th century, the U.S. paper and packaging industry resembled an old, well-run…
Let’s stop dancing around it and say what everyone in the market is thinking: the Smurfit–WestRock merger wasn’t the problem. In fact, it was a smart, strategic move. It eliminated…
Every industry has one company that everyone whispers about but no one calls out directly. In packaging, that company is Smurfit WestRock — a bloated, sluggish, overbuilt behemoth that has…
A New Type of Economic Gravity Every financial era has its invisible force. In the 1980s, it was deregulation; in the 1990s, globalization; in the 2010s, quantitative easing. Today, that…