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Shareholder un-plugged.
Sunday, August 25, 2002; Page H02
Carlyle's Fingers Do New Walk
Embattled Qwest Communications agreed to sell its phenomenally profitable yellow-pages division to a consortium led in part by the Carlyle Group, Washington's plugged-in and cash-rich merchant bank. It's the largest leveraged buyout since R.J. Reynolds bought Nabisco in the late 1980s. Carlyle and Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe will each put in $775 million in a deal valued at $7 billion. Qwest publishes the directories in 14 states where it still holds the local phone monopoly, earning profit margins of 63 percent. It will use proceeds from the sale to reduce its $26.5 billion in debt