Dun & Bradstreet

Looking back on some of the successful rollups of the past.

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$100B+ in spin-offs. WOW! When I first heard this I was shocked. I spent a lot of time looking at D&B over the years while at Third Point and when they were taken private and then public again. D&B is an interesting story of spin-offs that have gone on to become giants on their own. In all reality, these companies that were spun-off would not be as big today as they would have been if they stayed within D&B, but it’s an interesting historical timeline to look at what D&B spun-off, and think about what could have been…..

In 1961 D&B acquired R.H. Donnelley Corporation which was best known for publishing the Yellow Pages telephone directories.

In 1962 they acquired Moodys which at the time was a provider of financial data via the Moodys manuals.

In 1996, D&B was restructured into three entities- Dun & Bradstreet, Nielsen & Cognizant. Cognizant included the Nielsen TV rating business, Gartner Group, and other smaller entities.

In 2000, D&B spun off Moodys. Then in 2001, they acquired Harris InforSource, a data company, and Hoovers.

Other less-known acquisitions include Allbusiness.com which was a business information company for small businesses. This was eventually shut down and the domain name was sold.

D&B was one of the most successful rollups of data and information services providers. It’s interesting to think about the powerhouse they would be if they kept just a handful of these acquisitions over the years and leveraged modern-day technology with this rich data asset.