Yellow Pages

It appears next week is the deadline for initial bids on the Spanish publisher Telefonica Publicidad e Informacion, and there are reported to be five suitors: PagesJaunes (France Telecom), Yell Group and three private equity consortia. Saw this today on…

As we get ready for our Drilling Down event in San Jose later this month, we are also setting our sights on Directory Driven Commerce 2006, our directory industry event, which happens this Sept. 18-20 in Los Angeles. We are…

A Reuters report today reveals that Britain's Yell Group has taken formal steps toward submitting a bid for the 60 percent stake in the Spanish publisher Telefonica Publicidad e Informacion currently owned by Telefonica. Yell has retained Goldman Sachs to…

Yesterday, I attended the ADM regional meeting held here in Chicago, where I maintain the Midwest regional office for The Kelsey Group (which consists of me, a computer, phone and a tiny fridge filled with Diet Cokes). The ADM is…

Looks like two of the largest self storage companies — Public Storage and Shurgard — will be combining forces. Public Storage announced that it will be buying Shurgard for US$3 billion. The combined company will have 2,100 locations in 38…

Charles Laughlin pointed out an article from the Nashville Business Times about Verizon's entry into that market. Kathy Harless identified Nashville as one of the expansion markets at DDC '05 in her keynote address. Here is the article.

According to a story in today's New York Times AT&T (formerly SBC) is near a deal to acquire BellSouth:AT&T is expected to pay about $65 billion for BellSouth, the country's third largest phone company, which operates in a nine-state region…

The story is all over the financial press today that AT&T will acquire BellSouth for US$67 billion. Based on 2005 revenues, the combined Yellow Pages divisions of the two companies will have total revenues of about US$5.8 billion. I'd say…

A long list of potential suitors for Telefonica Publicidad e Informacion has emerged that invokes Claude Raines from "Casablanca": "Round up the usual suspects !" The parade of private equities whose names are listed among those at least interested in…

As I was doing some research on attorney spending online I stumbled across this blog on legal advertising, which basically argues with some anecdotal evidence that the print directory is delivering less value to lawyer-advertisers today than it has in…

Spanish telecom Telefonica may be ready to sell its 59.9 percent stake in the directory publisher Telefonica Publicidad e Informacion. One of TPI's apparent suitors is Apax Group, which is a former part owner of Britain's Yell Group, along with…

Interesting story in yesterday's National Post (Canada). The topic is not entirely new, the possible acquisition of a U.S. publisher by Canada's Yellow Pages Group. The article does provide a sourced comment from YPG's CFO, and it offers some detailed…

If you just read the headline from each of the companies reporting on the new national syndication research results, you could be excused if you thought that a lot of companies are the most used Yellow Pages directories. Some companies…

Listened to Eniro's 2005 earnings call yesterday. A number of interesting details, which we will explore in Local Media Journal next week. One key revelation was that print revenues in Norway are going to decline by 10 percent in 2006.…

Just saw this article in the Dayton Business Journal about The Berry Company's growing online sales force. As we wrote in the last edition of Local Media Journal , Berry recently signed a deal with Marchex to upgrade its guaranteed…

AT&T Yellow Pages has contributed to the debate over syndicated research by releasing its own assessment of how it has done so far in its markets measured as part of the ongoing third-party syndicated usage program.AT&T Yellow Pages (formerly SBC)…

Yell Group just posted solid numbers for the first nine months of its financial year, which ends on March 31. Its U.S. unit, Yellow Book, continues to post double digit gains, even when acquisitions are taken out of the picture.…

Not long after completing its acquisition of Phone Directories' Canadian operations, U.S. buyout firm Hicks Muse is pushing an aggressive expansion into bigger Canadian markets. Next week, Canadian Phone Directories, the Hicks-backed company led by industry veteran Olivier Vincent, will…

Yellow Book announced today that it has acquired Click Forward, a Coral Gables, Florida-based search engine marketing company. Terms were not disclosed. Yellow Book plans to use the assets gained through the acquisition to develop a local search product to…

One of the more controversial issues in the Yellow Pages business is the subject of companion directories. At last year's Directory Driven Commerce event, Joe Walsh spoke adamantly against the increasing number of mini directories and their impact on the…