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Jan. 14, 2008

On Friday, shares in Yell Group PLC were heavily traded and rose sharply in London trading on speculation about a potential acquisition bid from Google.

On heavy trading, Yell's stock increased over four percent, the biggest increase since December 2007.

The stock climbed 1.7 percent, to 331.25 pence at 8:37 a.m. in London, valuing the company at 2.6 billion pounds ($5.1 billion).

Jimmy Yates, a London-based trader at CMC Markets said "the rumor that Google may bid for Yell has been around before, and I'm not surprised to hear it has surfaced one more time."

Yates added "Yell has lost almost fifty percent of its value in the last eleven months and certainly looks more attractive today as a potential takeover candidate I must say."

In the U.K., the Independent Newspaper reported that "a market source heard talk of a 500 pence-per-share bid for Yell by Google."

As could be expected, spokespeople for both Google and Yell Group couldn't be reached to comment on the rumour.

Yell Group PLC was spun off from former phone monopoly BT Group PLC seven years ago and now competes directly with phone companies such as AT&T Inc. and some search engines such as Google and a few others.

Yellow Book, the largest independent yellow pages publisher in the U.K. now accounts for about fifty percent of all of Yell's sales.

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Source: Tech Crunch