Dun & Bradstreet history

In 1846 Benjamin Douglass, a young New York businessman with connections in the southern cotton trade, joined the firm.

In 1849, the rival John M. Bradstreet Company was founded in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Bradstreet Company popularized the use of credit ratings with publication of the first book of commercial ratings circa 1851.

In 1855 Bradstreet packed up and moved to New York, where he challenged the Mercantile Agency directly.

The firm opened its first office in London in 1857, and added five more foreign offices--in Glasgow, Paris, Melbourne, Mexico City, and Hamburg--by the end of the century.

Then, in 1859, Douglass sold out to Robert Graham Dun, who immediately changed the firm's name to R.G. Dun & Company.

An office in San Francisco opened in 1869.

Donnelley, best known for publishing the Yellow Pages telephone directories, was founded in Chicago in 1874 and also published trade magazines.

In 1891 there were 126 Dun branch offices.

Robert Dun Douglass, who was Benjamin Douglass's son and Robert Graham Dun's nephew, became general manager of the firm in 1896.

Nielsen, famous for its television rating service, was founded in Chicago in 1923 by Arthur C. Nielsen, Sr.

And later in 1931 when it purchased the National Credit Office, it reorganized under the name R.G. Dun & Corporation.1

In February of 1933 Dun & Co and Bradstreet began negotiations to merge.

The new company changed its name to R.G. Dun-Bradstreet Corporation and then to Dun & Bradstreet, Inc., in 1939.

In 1942 the company acquired Credit Clearing House, a credit-reporting agency that specialized in the clothing industry.

In 1958 the company began operating its own private wire network, which linked 79 of its major offices.

Overall, D&B expanded dramatically during the 1960’s by engineering ways to apply new technologies to evolving operations.

In 1961 Dun & Bradstreet acquired R.H. Donnelley Corporation.

1962: The company acquires Moody's Investors Service, a provider of financial data for investors on publicly owned corporations through its series of Moody's manuals.

Fowler, Elizabeth M. “Business is Joining in a Numbers Game.” New York Times: May 26, 1963.

In 1966 Dun & Bradstreet acquired Fantus Company, which specialized in area development surveys.

In 1968 it bought book publisher Thomas Y. Crowell.

Harrington Drake, chief executive officer of Dun & Bradstreet, was a longtime friend of the Nielsen family, and the two companies had been discussing a merger on and off since 1969.

In 1971 Dun & Bradstreet acquired Corinthian Broadcasting, which owned five CBS television affiliates and publisher Funk & Wagnalls.

In 1973 the Dun & Bradstreet Corporation was formed to become the parent company.

In 1978 Dun & Bradstreet acquired Technical Publishing, a trade and professional magazine publisher.

In 1983 it diversified into computer software when it acquired McCormack & Dodge, which published systems software for mainframe computers.

Dun & Bradstreet would have also purchased Information Resources Inc., a competitor of Nielsen, but a 1987 antitrust suit stopped it from doing so.

Also in 1990 the company announced its intention to sell two divisions of Dun & Bradstreet Software: Datastream International, Ltd., and Information Associates, Inc.

The company sold Donnelley Marketing, the IMS communications unit, and Carol Write Sales in 1991.

Dun & Bradstreet Information Services acquired Solidited, a Swedish company that provided commercial-credit information for Scandinavian businesses, on May 12, 1993. For example, it acquired a majority interest in Gartner Group Inc., an international market research firm, on April 8, 1993.

Also in 1994 Dun & Bradstreet announced that it would be getting out of the magazine publishing business and in the process ceasing publication of D & B Reports.

dorfman, dan. "cranky money managers try to light a fire under these 10 big stocks." money, june 1995.

In a move linked with its reorganization, in August 1996 the company increased its available line of credit, a back-up to its bonds, to $1.2 billion; hence the money should be there for innovation as needed.

In 1997 Dun & Bradstreet announced the release of two coding systems designed to simplify the process of making purchases on the Internet.

Their Feburary 1998 Stock Report lists D&B as a "secure investment," with yield of 2.7 percent, and a price earnings ratio of 18.3.

D&B's strides into e-commerce paid off, as revenue from Internet-related business reached $100 million in 1999, a 150 percent increase from the preceding year.

Further, its revenue from Internet business reached 33 percent, up from 17 percent in 2000.

Their print Million Dollar Directory became a web product renamed Selectory® in 2008 and Hoovers continues on as it’s own product.

The company has continued to expand and as of 2009 operates worldwide with almost 200 offices in Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America.

View excerpt on Project MUSE . Viewed August 14, 2012.