Yellow Pages

 

Executives and bankers for Verizon’s print an internet-based yellow pages business hit the street recently to raise immeasurable dollars. We were holding seeking to persuade investors across the country to advance over $9 billion with debt needed in view of a spinoff on the business.

It started the government financial aid November 2005, when Verizon hired J. P. Morgan and Bear Stearns to find out what to do with its telephone book business – a massive operation that, like many other media companies, had been radically transformed because of the Internet. Options included selling it to interested equity finance investors or spinning rid of it to investors.

In October, in the decision that was widely anticipated, Verizon’s board dictated to spin it away, primarily because a sale can have generated a giant tax bill. The business enterprise, previously called Verizon Information Services, generated $3.5 billion in revenue in 2005, earning $1.05 billion in profits. It publishes 138 million directories; Super Pages, the various search engines, may be the leading Internet yellow pages.