Everything about Yell Group totally explained
Yell Group plc is a leading international directories business operating in classified advertising markets in the UK, US, Spain and Latin America through printed, online and telephone-based media.It is listed on the
London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the
FTSE 250 Index of leading UK quoted companies. It is based in
Reading in
Berkshire, over 40 miles west from
London.
The group has its origins in the division of the
privatised former British state telecommunications operator
BT Group plc which produced the UK version of
Yellow Pages, and has been an independent quoted company since 2001. It provides paper, online and telephone-based classified directories.
History
In 1966,
Post Office Telecommunications a division of the UK
General Post Office, launched the first UK Yellow Pages classified directory in
Brighton,
Sussex. Yellow Pages were rolled out across the UK by 1973, and became the first information provider on
Prestel.
The group launched its iconic
J. R. Hartley adverts in 1983, and became a separately identified business within the BT Group after BT was privitised in 1984. The red fronted
Business Pages launched in 1985 in
Bristol and
South Wales, and the group piloted
Talking Pages in Brighton and Bristol from 1987. The number for accessing Talking Pages was unified in 1994 to 0800 600 900, and the group launched Yell.com, its
internet and now its most public brand, in 1996.
Due to the
dot-com crash of 2001, BT restructured and agreed to sell the now separated Yell.com to
Apax Partners and
Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst for £2.14 billion/$3.5 billion, making it then the largest non-corporate LBO in European history. Yell later bought US directories publisher McLeodUSA for about $600 million, and floated on London's
FTSE in
2003.
Acquisitions
It started an acquisition program in the U.S. in 1999, and this has continued since it became an independent company. In May 2005 Yell announced that it intended to purchase U.S. directory publisher TransWestern Holdings L.P. from a consortium of private equity houses for $1,575 million (£829 million). Transwestern operated in 25 states and had core positions in
California and
Texas. The deal went through later in the year, making Yell's U.S. subsidiary
Yellow Book the fifth largest directory publisher in the United States at that time. It has made further small acquisitions since then.
Yell's turnover for the year ended 31 March 2007 was £2,075.1 million. Profit before tax was £248.0 million and net profit was £216.3 million.
In April 2006 Yell agreed to purchase a 59.9% stake in Spanish phone directory firm Telefonica Publicidad e Informacion (TPI) from
Telefonica, and launched a bid for the remaining shares which valued TPI at a total of
£2.3 billion (
€3.3 billion;
US$4.1bn). Since then, Yell has bought further capital and in September 2007 reached agreement with the minority shareholders to acquire the remaining 1.28% of what is now named Yell Publicidad.
In July 2006, Yell threatened
Yellowikis with legal action, claiming that people will confuse the two organisations. .
Further Information
Get more info on 'Yell Group'.
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