Hartford’s Home Grown Spanish Directory Purchased

November 8 - 15, 2006
By The Hartford News Staff

On October 24, 2006, Telmex, Mexico’s leading phone company, owned by billionaire Carlos Slim, purchased an 80 percent stake in the biggest publisher of Spanish – language telephone books in the United States, from Blue Equity LLC, a private equity firm based in Louisville, Kentucky.

Cobalt Publishing, a subsidiary of Blue Equity purchased Hartford’s Spanish Yellow Pages, formerly known as Hola Hartford Hispanic Directory, in April of 2005 from West Hartford’s Jason and Lorena Gassner. The directory was renamed ENLACE after being acquired. Telmex said it plans to rename ENLACE as SECCIÓN AMARILLA, which translates as Yellow Pages and is the brand of Telmex’s 135 directories in Mexico.

The yellow page directories are targeted to Spanish speaking households in 32 markets across the United States, totaling over 3 million copies annually. Release for the 2007 Connecticut publication is Spring 2007, with a total distribution of 85,000 covering Hartford and New Haven Counties. For more information, call Jason Gassner (860) 209-1507