InfoUSA Buys Edith Roman

(Direct Newsline) InfoUSA has acquired The Edith Roman Cos., a list brokerage and management firm, for an undisclosed sum.

“Edith Roman is a slam dunk,” Vinod Gupta, infoUSA’s founder and chairman, says about the acquisition.

The purchase will make infoUSA a larger player in the list brokerage and management business. It will also give the company’s Walter Karl operations the ability to set up proprietary databases through its data-processing services capabilities and offer a variety of Internet marketing services.

Edith Roman will operate under infoUSA’s Walter Karl umbrella. Gupta estimates that Pearl River, NY-based Edith Roman employs around 70 people, all of whom would be kept on.

Edith Roman was launched by its eponymous founder in 1956, when she began typing compiled mailing lists. Before the sale, the company was owned by her sons, Steven and Wayne Roberts, both of whom will remain with the firm after the acquisition, Gupta says.

The acquisition comes on the heels of another infoUSA purchase: On Friday, the Omaha-based data firm made final its bid for OneSource Information Services. InfoUSA, which offered $8.85 per share for the Concord, MA-based business information products and services firm, paid more than $100 million for it. The purchase price was offset by $22 million in cash assets OneSource held at acquisition, according to Gupta.