If the 1980s, conglomerates were all the rage, the 1990s, breaking the things up again is the height of fashion, and the latest to decide that the whole may be less than the sum of the parts is Wilton, Connecticut-based Dun & Bradstreet Corp. The company – owner of Dun & Bradstreet Software, although it appears that this is on the block and won’t figure in any of the three new companies; Moody’s Investors Service Inc; and the A C Nielsen television ratings and Dataquest market research services – has decided to split the 155-year-old business in three. Dun & Bradstreet will continue to exist and will be the name for the company that will provide the business information for which it has been known for a century and a half. Dun & Bradstreet Corp will consist of Dun & Bradstreet Information Services, the world’s largest source of business-to-business marketing and commercial-credit information; Moody’s Investors Service; and the Reuben H Donnelley provider of Yellow Pages marketing and publishing. It will have 1995 sales of $2,000m, 16,000 employees and operations in 40 countries. A second company, Cognizant Corp, will offer advice and information to the health-care and technology industries. It will include Nielsen Media Research, Gartner Group Inc and Dataquest Inc. A third company, reverting to the A C Nielsen name, will be created to provide marketing data to companies that produce consumer packaged goods. The ramifications of the split will result in a fourth-quarter charge that will reduce the company’s profits by $448m pre-tax. Job cuts should amount to less than 2% of the 50,000 employees.
