Valassis to buy Advo for $1 billion in settlement

For all you direct mail junkies... here is a bit of news from the DMNews website:

Valassis Communications Inc. said Dec. 19 that it would buy fellow direct marketer Advo Inc. for $1.08 billion, an 11 percent discount to the original price in a deal ending a four-month legal battle.

Valassis a newspaper insert distributor based in Livonia, MI, will pay $33 a share in cash for Windsor, CT-based Advo, below the $37 a share it agreed to pay when the two companies first struck a deal. Including $125 million in Advo debt, the deal is valued at about $1.2 billion.

The transaction will create the nation's largest integrated media services provider, featuring comprehensive product and customer offerings in the industry serving 20,000 advertisers worldwide, including 94 of the top 100 advertisers in the United States. Advo's shared mail distribution business penetrates up to 114 million households, or 90 percent of U.S. homes, adding substantially to Valassis' weekly newspaper distribution of more than 60 million households.