Nielsen Holdings plc is an American information, data and
market measurement firm. Nielsen operates in over 100 countries and employs approximately 44,000 people worldwide.
The company was listed on the
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed ...
(NYSE) and used to be a component of the
S&P 500
The Standard and Poor's 500, or simply the S&P 500, is a stock market index tracking the stock performance of 500 large companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States. It is one of the most commonly followed equity indices. As of ...
.
History
Formation
Nielsen was founded in 1923 by
Arthur C. Nielsen, Sr., who invented an approach to measuring competitive sales results that made the concept of "
market share" a practical management tool. The company was originally incorporated in the
Netherlands
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, image_map =
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, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands
, established_title = Before independence
, established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
and later was purchased on May 24, 2006, by a consortium of
private equity firm
A private equity firm is an investment management company that provides financial backing and makes investments in the private equity of startup or operating companies through a variety of loosely affiliated investment strategies including lev ...
s.
Merger and listing
In January 2011, Nielsen consummated an initial public offering of common stock and, subsequently, started trading on the
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed ...
under the symbol “NLSN”.
On August 31, 2015, Nielsen N.V., a Dutch public company listed on the New York Stock Exchange, merged with Nielsen Holdings plc, by way of a cross-border merger under the European Cross-Border Merger Directive, with Nielsen Holdings plc being the surviving company.
The merger effectively changed the place of incorporation of Nielsen's publicly traded parent holding company from the Netherlands to England and Wales, with no changes made to the business being conducted by Nielsen prior to the merger.
2022 buyout
On March 30, 2022, Nielsen announced that it had accepted a $16 billion offer from a group of private equity investors led by Evergreen Coast Capital Corp., an affiliate of
Elliott Investment Management L.P., and
Brookfield Business Partners L.P. If the transaction closes, the company will go private.
Company information
![NielsenMarkham3](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/NielsenMarkham3.jpg)
Nielsen is a global, independent measurement and data company for
fast-moving consumer goods,
consumer behavior, and
media
Media may refer to:
Communication
* Media (communication), tools used to deliver information or data
** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising
** Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass e ...
. With a presence in more than 100 countries and services covering more than 90% of the globe's GDP and population, Nielsen provides clients with data about what consumers watch (programming,
advertising
Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...
) and what they buy (categories,
brand
A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create ...
s, products) on a global and local basis and how those choices intersect.
The company's operations span developing and emerging markets worldwide, in more than 100 countries. According to SEC records, on February 26, 2015, Nielsen N.V., announced that its board of directors unanimously approved a proposal that resulted in a change in the company's legal domicile, from the Netherlands to the United Kingdom.
[Nielsen Proposes To Move Incorporation From Netherlands To United Kingdom](_blank)
February 26, 2015 Upon approval, the company became incorporated under English law and was registered as a public limited company to be named Nielsen Holdings PLC.
February 26, 2015
James Attwood Jr. is Nielsen's non-executive chairman,
and David Kenny is Nielsen's Chief Executive Officer. James Attwood succeeded Dave Calhoun as Executive Chairman in January 2016. Prior to joining Nielsen as CEO in 2006, Dave Calhoun served as Vice Chairman of the
General Electric
General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable en ...
Company and President and Chief Executive Officer of GE Infrastructure, the largest of six GE business units. He served as Nielsen CEO from to 2006 to 2014, when he was succeeded by Mitch Barns. Barns joined Nielsen in 1997 and has held various roles in Europe, Asia, and North America leading major parts of the business.
On December 3, 2018, David Kenny was named CEO of Nielsen, succeeding Mitch Barns.
While the Nielsen brand is most often associated with
television ratings, those TV rating services comprise approximately one-quarter of the company's business and revenues. After substantial work to simplify the company over the last several years, Nielsen today aligns its business into two reporting segments: Buy (consumer purchasing measurement and analytics) and Watch (media audience measurement and analytics).
What consumers buy
Nielsen's Buy segment (approx. 45% of global revenues) primarily helps packaged goods companies, retailers, and Wall Street analysts understand what consumers are buying in terms of categories, brands and products. The company's aim is to measure all consumer purchases as
buying behavior
Trade involves the transfer of goods and services from one person or entity to another, often in exchange for money. Economists refer to a system or network that allows trade as a market.
An early form of trade, barter, saw the direct excha ...
continues to fragment across channels and segments.
For example, it is Nielsen's data that measures how much
Diet Coke
Diet Coke (also branded as Coca-Cola Light, Coca-Cola Diet or Coca-Cola Light Taste) is a sugar-free and low-calorie soft drink produced and distributed by the Coca-Cola Company. It contains artificial sweeteners instead of sugar. Unveiled on ...
vs.
Diet Pepsi
Diet Pepsi is a Diet drink, diet carbonation, carbonated cola soft drink produced by PepsiCo, introduced in 1964 as a variant of Pepsi with no sugar. First test marketed in 1963 under the name Patio (soda), Patio Diet Cola, it was re-branded as ' ...
is sold in stores, or how much Crest versus
Colgate toothpaste is sold. Nielsen accomplishes this by purchasing and analyzing huge amounts of retail data that measures what is being sold in the store, and then combines it with household panel data that captures everything that is brought into the home. These measures of sales performance also fuel a range of forward-looking analytics to help clients improve the precision and efficiency of their advertising spending, maximize the impact of their promotion budgets and optimize their product assortment. They also can provide insights into how changes in product offerings, pricing or
marketing
Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...
would change sales. Major clients include
The Coca-Cola Company
The Coca-Cola Company is an American multinational beverage corporation founded in 1892, best known as the producer of Coca-Cola. The Coca-Cola Company also manufactures, sells, and markets other non-alcoholic beverage concentrates and syrup ...
,
Nestlé
Nestlé S.A. (; ; ) is a Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate corporation headquartered in Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland. It is the largest publicly held food company in the world, measured by revenue and other metrics, since ...
S.A.,
The Procter & Gamble Company
The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) is an American multinational consumer goods corporation headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, founded in 1837 by William Procter and James Gamble. It specializes in a wide range of personal health/consumer hea ...
, Unilever Group, and
Walmart
Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...
. While the United States is the company's largest market, Nielsen is a global company. In the Buy business, it covers 106 countries representing more than 90% of the world's population.
What consumers watch
Nielsen's Watch segment (approx. 55% of global revenues) primarily measures what consumers are watching (and listening to) across most devices: TV, radio, computers, mobile, over-the-top, etc. The company measures
consumption
Consumption may refer to:
*Resource consumption
*Tuberculosis, an infectious disease, historically
* Consumption (ecology), receipt of energy by consuming other organisms
* Consumption (economics), the purchasing of newly produced goods for curren ...
of programming and advertising across all distribution points. Nielsen's ratings are used by advertisers and networks to shape the buying and selling of advertising. Major clients include
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...
,
NBC Universal
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are ...
,
News Corporation
News Corporation (abbreviated News Corp.), also variously known as News Corporation Limited, was an American multinational mass media corporation controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in New ...
, and
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Disney Stud ...
.
[Nielsen 10-K Report 2011, February 22, 2012] Nielsen's Watch business measures media in 47 countries that together represent approximately 80% of global advertising spending. Nielsen's digital audience measurement capability is a rapidly growing part of this footprint.
Company history
Arthur C. Nielsen and the invention of "Market Share"
Arthur C. Nielsen founded the
AC Nielsen Company in August 1923 with the idea of selling engineering performance surveys. It was the first company to offer
market research
Market research is an organized effort to gather information about target markets and customers: know about them, starting with who they are. It is an important component of business strategy and a major factor in maintaining competitiveness. Mar ...
.
[Gillespie, Mary. "Nielsen makes viewers count by watching them watch TV." ''Chicago Sun-Times'', April 9, 1989] The company expanded its business in 1932 by creating a retail index that tracked the flow of food and drug purchases. This was the first retail measurement of its kind and for the first time allowed a company to determine its "share" of the market—the origination of the concept of "
market share"
Arthur C. Nielsen is credited with coining this business term.
Radio and television
In 1936, Arthur C. Nielsen acquired the Audimeter, which measured which
radio station
Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radi ...
s a radio had been tuned to during the day. After tinkering with the device for a few years, the company created a national radio rating service in 1942.
[Basler, Barbara. "A.C. Nielsen, Who Devised System That Rates TV Programs, Dead." ''The New York Times'', June 4, 1980] The company collected information on which stations radios were tuned to in one thousand homes. Then, this survey data was sold to manufacturers who were interested in the popularity of programs and demographic information about listeners for advertising purposes. This was the birth of
audience measurement
Audience measurement measures how many people are in an audience, usually in relation to radio listenership and television viewership, but also in relation to newspaper and magazine readership and, increasingly, web traffic on websites. Sometim ...
that would become the most well-known part of Nielsen's business when applied to television.
Today, these are commonly referred to as "
Nielsen ratings".
The company began measuring television audiences in 1950, at a time when the medium was just getting off the ground. Just as with radio, a sampling of homes across the U.S. was used to develop ratings. This information was collected on a device that was attached to a television that recorded what was being watched. In 1953, the company began sending out diaries to a smaller sample of homes ("Nielsen families") within the survey to have them record what they had watched.
This data was put together with information from the devices. This combination of data allowed the company to statistically estimate the number of Americans watching TV and the demographic breakdown of viewers.
This became an important tool for advertisers and networks.
In the 1980s, the company launched a new measurement device known as the "
people meter". The device resembles a remote control with buttons for each individual family member and extras for guests. Viewers push a button to signify when they are in the room and push it again when they leave, even if the TV is still on. This form of measurement was intended to provide a more accurate picture of who was watching and when.
In July 2008, Nielsen released the first in a series of quarterly reports, detailing video and TV usage across the ‘three screens’ – Television, Internet and Mobile devices. The A2/M2 Three Screen Report also includes trends in timeshifted viewing behavior and its relationship to online video viewing, a demographic breakdown of mobile video viewers and DVR penetration.
On September 30, 2016, Nielsen made its Digital Content Ratings available in full syndication for clients.
On September 9, 2016, Nielsen announced that it would retire its paper TV diaries by mid-2017 and provide all electronic measurement in its local television ratings.
Private equity
Nielsen was acquired by the
Dun & Bradstreet Company in 1984. In 1996, D&B divided the company into two separate companies:
Nielsen Media Research
Nielsen Media Research (NMR) is an American firm that measures media audiences, including television, radio, theatre, films (via the AMC Theatres MAP program), and newspapers. Headquartered in New York City, it is best known for the Nielsen rati ...
, which was responsible for TV ratings, and
AC Nielsen
The Nielsen Corporation, self-referentially known as The Nielsen Company, and formerly known as ACNielsen or AC Nielsen, is a global marketing research firm, with worldwide headquarters in New York City, United States. Regional headquarters for ...
, which was responsible for consumer shopping trends and box-office data. In 1999, Nielsen Media Research was acquired by the Dutch publishing company
VNU (Verenigde Nederlandse Uitgeverijen). VNU later acquired AC Nielsen and recombined the two businesses in 2001. In between, VNU sold off its newspaper properties to
Wegener and its consumer magazines to
Sanoma
Sanoma Corporation (, formerly SanomaWSOY) is Finland's largest media group. The company has media business in Finland and a learning business in Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Norway and Spain, among others. The company is headquarte ...
. The company's publishing arm also owned several publications including ''
The Hollywood Reporter
''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Hollywood film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade paper, and in 2010 switched to a weekly larg ...
'' and ''
Billboard'' magazine. VNU combined the Nielsen properties with other research and data collection units including BASES, Claritas, HCI and Spectra. VNU also acquired companies that added to its measurement capabilities.
Becoming a public company
Nielsen was a private company from 2006 through 2011. On January 25, 2011 the company listed itself on the New York Stock Exchange and issued an initial public offering (IPO) that raised $1.8 billion in the largest private equity-backed U.S. IPO since 2006.
Mergers, acquisitions, strategic alliances and divestitures
2004
Nielsen began a joint venture called AGB Nielsen Media Research with
WPP Group's AGB Group, a European competitor which provides similar services.
2006
VNU acquired a majority stake in Buzzmetrics, a company which measures consumer-generated media online. Under the new ownership, Nielsen bought the remaining shares of the company in 2007. In the same year, Nielsen acquired Telephia, which measures mobile media, and Bilesim Medya, a Turkish advertising intelligence firm. VNU was acquired by a group of six private equity firms: the American
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts
KKR & Co. Inc., also known as Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., is an American global investment company that manages multiple alternative asset classes, including private equity, energy, infrastructure, real estate, credit, and, through its strate ...
,
Thomas H. Lee Partners
Thomas H. Lee Partners, L.P. is an American private equity firm based in Boston investing in middle market growth companies across financial technology and services, healthcare and technology & business solutions.
History
Founded in 1974 by ...
,
Blackstone Group
Blackstone Inc. is an American alternative investment management company based in New York City. Blackstone's private equity business has been one of the largest investors in leveraged buyouts in the last three decades, while its real estate bu ...
,
Carlyle Group
The Carlyle Group is a multinational private equity, alternative asset management and financial services corporation based in the United States with $376 billion of assets under management. It specializes in private equity, real assets, and ...
and
Hellman & Friedman, and Dutch equity firm
AlpInvest Partners
AlpInvest Partners is a Dutch private equity asset manager with over $47 billion of assets under management as of September 30, 2017. The firm invests on behalf of a broad range of institutional investors from North America, Asia, Europe, South ...
for £5bn.
In the same year, the group hired David L. Calhoun, formerly of
General Electric
General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable en ...
, as CEO. He renamed VNU as The Nielsen Company in 2007. VNU sold its business publications division for €320m (£210m) to venture capital group
3i, which then sold the UK division (VNU Business Publications Ltd) to
Incisive Media
''Incisive Media'' is a B2B information and events business. It is based in London, United Kingdom.
History
Incisive Media is a business-to-business (B2B) information and events company founded by Tim Weller, in 1994 with the launch of '' Inve ...
.
[Incisive to buy VNU Business Publications](_blank)
''The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally.
It was f ...
'', February 6, 2007
2007
In June, Nielsen acquired Telephia, a provider of syndicated consumer research to the telecom and mobile media markets.
2008
Nielsen acquired IAG Research which measures viewer engagement with TV commercials. The same year, Nielsen made a strategic investment in
NeuroFocus, a California firm applying neuroscience brainwave techniques for consumer research. The firm was later fully acquired by Nielsen in 2011 In 2009 and 2010, Nielsen sold its business magazines; its well-known entertainment properties went to the new company
e5 Global Media
Prometheus Global Media was a New York City-based B2B media company. The company was formed in December 2009, when Nielsen Company sold its entertainment and media division to a private equity-backed group led by Pluribus Capital Management and ...
.
2009
Nielsen acquired The Cambridge Group, a
management consulting
Management consulting is the practice of providing consulting services to organizations to improve their performance or in any way to assist in achieving organizational objectives. Organizations may draw upon the services of management consultan ...
firm headquartered in Chicago. The firm researches latent and emerging consumer demand.
2010
In June, Nielsen paired with
McKinsey & Company to create the social media consulting company
NM Incite. NM Incite had operations in 13 global markets, including: US, UK,
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
, Spain, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, India, Brazil, Canada and Korea.
2011
In August, Nielsen acquired Marketing Analytics, Inc.
2012
In February, Nielsen launched
The Demand Institute in collaboration with
The Conference Board
The Conference Board, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit business membership and research group organization. It counts over 1,000 public and private corporations and other organizations as members, encompassing 60 countries. The Conference Board co ...
. The Demand Institute is a non-profit, non-advocacy organization. In July, Nielsen acquired the advertising tech company Vizu. The acquisition was made so that Nielsen can better analyze the effectiveness of online advertisement. In November, Nielsen acquired SocialGuide, a provider of social TV measurement, analytics and audience engagement solutions. On December 17, 2012, Nielsen disclosed that it would acquire
Arbitron, a company primarily involved in
radio
Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmi ...
audience measurement, for $1.3 billion. The successful acquisition was completed on September 30, 2013.
2013
On June 17, 2013, Nielsen announced that Onex Corp (TSX: OCX) had completed the acquisition of Nielsen Expositions for $950 million in cash consideration. Nielsen Expositions operated tradeshows in the United States. The company was renamed Emerald Expositions Inc. after the transaction.
2014
On February 3, 2014, Nielsen announced the acquisition of Harris Interactive, Inc. (NASDAQ:HPOL). This allowed Nielsen to take ownership of ''
The Harris Poll
The Harris Poll (legal name: Harris Insights and Analytics) is an American market research and analytics company that has been tracking the sentiment, behaviors and motivations of American adults since 1963. In addition to the traditional consulti ...
''. Later on February 26, 2014, Nielsen acquired Nexium, a retail in-store execution and sales analytics company. On September 18, 2014 Nielsen announced the acquisition of Indicus Analytics Pvt Ltd. On October 8, 2014, Nielsen acquired Affinnova, an international media and marketing research firm. The Affinnova team joins Nielsen's legacy BASES team to form Nielsen's Innovation Practice area.
2015
On January 22, 2015, Nielsen acquires Brandbank, specialized in the process of digitally collecting, managing and distributing FMCG product and brand image content for retail syndication across in-store, print promotional and e-commerce platforms. On March 4, 2015, Nielsen announced the acquisition of Exelate, a provider of data and technology to facilitate the buying and selling of advertising across programmatic platforms.
On May 27, 2015, Nielsen acquired Innerscope Research, which specialized in
consumer neuroscience
Consumer neuroscience is the combination of consumer research with modern neuroscience. The goal of the field is to find neural explanations for consumer behaviors in individuals both with or without disease.
Consumer research
Consumer research h ...
using
biometrics
Biometrics are body measurements and calculations related to human characteristics. Biometric authentication (or realistic authentication) is used in computer science as a form of identification and access control. It is also used to identify i ...
, eye tracking and facial coding. Nielsen renamed its combined offering as Nielsen Consumer Neuroscience, and named Carl Marci as Chief Neuroscientist.
2016
On March 3, 2016, Nielsen acquired Pointlogic, in marketing decision support systems. On March 10, 2016, Nielsen acquired Mumbai-based mobile usage measurer Informate Mobile Intelligence for an undisclosed amount. On June 21, 2016, Nielsen acquired Repucom, a sports measurement, evaluation and intelligence company based in
Stamford, Connecticut. On December 20, 2016, Nielsen announced its agreement with Tribune Media Company to purchase
Gracenote
Gracenote, Inc. is a company owned by Nielsen Holdings that provides music, video and sports metadata and automatic content recognition (ACR) technologies to entertainment services and companies, worldwide. Formerly CDDB ("Compact Disc Data Ba ...
, a provider of media and entertainment metadata.
2017
On January 5, 2017,
The Carlyle Group
The Carlyle Group is a multinational private equity, alternative asset management and financial services corporation based in the United States with $376 billion of assets under management. It specializes in private equity, real assets, and ...
acquired Claritas from Nielsen. On January 23, 2017, the Stagwell Group announced that it acquired Nielsen's Harris brand and the Harris Poll through its Stagwell Media LLC. On February 1, 2017, Nielsen completed its acquisition of Gracenote. On February 23, 2017, Nielsen acquired Rhiza, Inc., a Pittsburgh-based media and consumer analytics software firm.
2021
On July 8, 2021, Nielsen acquired TVTY, a TV attribution provider and ad monitoring company based in Paris, France, for an undisclosed amount.
Verenigde Nederlandse Uitgeverijen
(VNU, literally "United Dutch Publishers", founded 1964) was a
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
publishing company with products including European
consumer
A consumer is a person or a group who intends to order, or uses purchased goods, products, or services primarily for personal, social, family, household and similar needs, who is not directly related to entrepreneurial or business activities. ...
magazines,
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
regional newspapers, business publications in the European and North American markets, and educational publications.
In 1997 VNU acquired the directory publishing business of ITT Sheraton (ITT World Directories) for $2.1 billion; the business was renamed VNU World Directories.
VNU acquired Nielsen Media Research, part of the former AC Nielsen Company, in 1999. It was the owner of the
Hungarian business magazine ''
Figyelő
''Figyelő'' ('' en, Observer'') was a Christian-conservative Hungarian business magazine published on every Thursday by the Hungarian publishing company K4A Lapkiadó (owned by Mária Schmidt). ''Figyelő'' covered a broad range of subjects, s ...
'' in the 1990s.
In 2000, VNU acquired
Miller Freeman, Inc. from
United News & Media
UBM plc was a British business-to-business (B2B) events organiser headquartered in London, England, before its acquisition by Informa in 2018. It had a long history as a multinational media company. Its main focus was on B2B events, but its pr ...
for a reported price of $650 million.
[Staff (31 July 2000) '"VNU Acquires Miller Freeman From United News & Media" ''Business Publisher'' 15(1): p.1;] VNU merged much of the purchased Miller Freeman assets into VNU Expositions. VNU subsequently divested themselves of a few former Miller Freeman assets.
VNU announced a heavy restructuring of its technology news portal, VNUNet, in February 2001. Ten employees were laid off due to the plan.
The company disposed of its entire magazine publishing arm later in 2001 to
Sanoma
Sanoma Corporation (, formerly SanomaWSOY) is Finland's largest media group. The company has media business in Finland and a learning business in Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Norway and Spain, among others. The company is headquarte ...
for €1.25 million, and sold its newspaper properties to
Wegener. Focusing instead on market research and data collection, it acquired AC Nielsen in 2001, recombining the two halves of the former Nielsen business, and added other research and data collection units including BASES, Claritas, HCI and Spectra. In 2006 the company was acquired by a consortium of six investors for €28.75 per share, a sum of €7.5 billion. In the same year, the group hired
David L. Calhoun, formerly of
General Electric
General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable en ...
, as CEO.
In 2004,
VNU World Directories was sold to
Apax Partners
Apax Partners LLP is a British private equity firm, headquartered in London, England. The company also operates out of six other offices in New York, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Tel Aviv, Munich and Shanghai. As of December 2017, the firm, including its ...
and
Cinven
Cinven is a global private equity firm founded in 1977, with offices in nine international locations in Guernsey, London, New York, Paris, Frankfurt, Milan, Luxembourg, Madrid, and Hong Kong that acquires Europe and United States based corporat ...
. VNU sold its business publications division in 2006 for €320m (£210m) to venture capital group
3i, which then sold the UK division (VNU Business Publications Ltd) to
Incisive Media
''Incisive Media'' is a B2B information and events business. It is based in London, United Kingdom.
History
Incisive Media is a business-to-business (B2B) information and events company founded by Tim Weller, in 1994 with the launch of '' Inve ...
.
[
The company was renamed The Nielsen Company in 2007.]
Corporate affairs and culture
FIFA has signed up with Nielsen to provide official market research for the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup
The 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup was the 10th and final edition of the FIFA Confederations Cup, a quadrennial international men's football tournament organised by FIFA. It was held in Russia, from 17 June to 2 July 2017, as a prelude to the 201 ...
and the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
See also
* Nielsen Corporation
References
External links
*
Nielsen Wire
- Nielsen news blog
Nielsen 90 Year Timeline
— SEC
{{Authority control
Companies formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange
Holding companies established in 1923
Marketing companies established in 1923
Market research companies of the United States
Magazine publishing companies of the United States
Holding companies based in New York City
2011 initial public offerings
Research and analysis firms of the United States
Research and analysis firms of the United Kingdom
1923 establishments in Illinois
2022 mergers and acquisitions