Ratings giant considering offers
Ratings giant Nielsen disclosed Wednesday it is weighing a sale of the company, which lists its headquarters in New York City while maintaining a large office in Wilton for CEO Mitch Barns and other senior executives.
Barns announced in July plans to leave Nielsen by year’s end, with Nielsen not naming immediately a replacement for the Westport resident who received compensation of $10.2 million last year. Board chairman James Attwood has taken an executive role in the interim, with Attwood a partner at the private equity firm Carlyle Group.
On Monday, Nielsen installed a new chief financial officer in Dave Anderson, who replaces Jamere Jackson who left to become CFO of Hertz. Anderson most recently was CFO of Alexion Pharmaceuticals, which announced last year the move of its headquarters to Boston from New Haven. Before that, Anderson spent more than a decade as CFO of Honeywell International.
The company has hired JPMorgan Chase, Guggenheim Securities and the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to advise the board of directors.
Nielsen said the decision to consider a sale was the result of a strategic review of a business unit that collects information on retail sales, with the company known best for its TV audience ratings. Arthur C. Nielsen founded the company in 1923, with Nielsen acquired in 2006 by a consortium of private equity firms that included Carlyle Group.
In 2011, Nielsen went public with an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, with Capital Research Global Investors and Vanguard Group the two largest stockholders as of March with more than 10 percent of shares outstanding. In June, New York City-based Elliott Management announced it had acquired stock amounting to 8 percent of shares, with the firm promising to press Nielsen to consider a sale.
Nielsen did not rule out remaining independent in a Wednesday press release, and gave no timeline for the process except to say the board is proceeding “expeditiously.” Nielsen was scheduled to participate Wednesday morning at an investment conference in New York City sponsored by Goldman Sachs.
In the second quarter, Nielsen earnings were down 45 percent from a year earlier to $72 million, with revenue flat at $1.6 billion due to a 5 percent decline in its retail data service that Nielsen put on the auction block in July. At the time, Nielsen forecast a 1 percent decline in overall revenue this year.
Nielsen has been cutting jobs in response, earmarking $65 million in the second quarter for severance and other restructuring expenses, largely for the retail business, while keeping another $93 million in reserve for planned future cuts.
Nielsen has not stated how many jobs have been affected, with the company entering the year with a global workforce of 46,000 people. In March, the company notified Florida regulators of plans to cut 725 jobs in the Florida towns of North Venice and Oldsmar, with those layoffs now under way.