Member news

The British Prime Minister and Communities Secretary announced that the public will have more access to Ordnance Survey (OS) maps from next year, as part of a Government drive to open up data to improve transparency.  The UK Data Publishers Association said that this is a step that will have significant repercussions, not only in the use of mapping data and the market for geographical information systems (GIS), but potentially in the whole area of public data and its re-use. So far OS map information has been licensed in return for royalty income to fund its activities. OS is one of a number of "trading funds", UK Government Departments or executive agencies, which are financed in whole or in part through their own commercial activities.

Frédéric Gastaldo is to take over as President of the Swisscom Directories Board of Directors with effect of December 1. He will be succeeding Edi Bähler, who will remain on the Board of Directors as vice-president. Michel Datchary joins as new member of the board. Until May of this year he was CEO of Pages Jaunes, the French equivalent of the Yellow Pages, in France.

From now on Schluetersche Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG is using DATACOPY’s publishing software DirectoryComposer for the new editions of „Gelbe Seiten regional“ (Regional Yellow Pages). This makes Schluetersche the first German company producing their telephone books  with a fully XML based workflow starting with the data management and data export up to the creation of PDF data.

Yell has created an ‘intelligent’ online ad space and separate recruitment website that aims to hook in new recruits. The ad space shows live job vacancies powered by an RSS feed and presented as animated yellow fish, using the tag line ‘Hooks, line and thinkers’.

Both the expandable banner and website (www.yell.jobs) were designed by recruitment communications company TMP Worldwide and feature ‘digigami’ animals that come to life – created using a digital version of origami. 



In the first eight months of 2009, 145 million searches for products and services carried out were carried out on Paginegialle.it, which shows the importance of online for SEAT's business clients. To help businesses and commercial operators improve their online presence, SEAT Pagine Gaille has now created the PagineGialle.it WebPoint network with 180 “PagineGialle.it WebPoint” agencies throughout Italy. 

The Financial Times reported that Yell had received the required 95 % support from its lenders to put into action plans to raise £ 500m in an equity issue. Yell Group is trying to restructure its debt of £ 3.8 bn and extend the maturity of their loans to 2014. For this it needs the support of its 300 creditors and approval of about 1000 lending institutions. (Source: Financial Times)

The Financial Times reports that Yell Group has not won enough lender support for its plans to restructure its £3.8bn debt, to meet the deadline it had set itself. It is now expected that Yell will set another deadline, perhaps in two or three days' time,  to give lenders further time to approve the plans. It needs support of 95 per cent of its creditors. The Financial Times said that although the response had been positive – above 80 per cent – the process had proved difficult because Yell has about 300 creditors, led by HSBC, and approvals are needed from about 1,000 lending entities. (Source: Financial Times)

Yell and horsesmouth.co.uk, the world’s first social networking site for informal online mentoring, launched the 2009 Mentoring Works Awards, which celebrate the valuable role that mentors are playing by giving up their free time and their valuable knowledge to help others starting up, growing or simply managing a business.

The Italian newspaper Milano Finanza reports this morning that the three private equity funds that jointly owns the 50% of Seat PG under a joint shareholding agreement have initiated negotiation to sell their stakes. The newsapaper also mentions two possible buyers, two Italian businessmen (Virgilio Degiovanni and Fabio Arpe, backed by capital from the State of Libia). A Media Analyst at Exane BNP Paribas noted that the acquisition of 30% or more of the shares would trigger a mandatory tender offer for the outstanding capital.