Reed buys Choicepoint

This should be interesting.

Reed Elsevier Buys ChoicePoint for $4.1B - AP news story.

LONDON (AP) — Reed Elsevier PLC, the owner of the LexisNexis information service, said Thursday it will buy U.S. data services firm ChoicePoint Inc. for $4.1 billion in cash.

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Last year, the company settled with 43 states over allegations it failed to adequately secure consumers' personal information. The company agreed to adopt stronger security measures, and to pay $500,000 for public education campaigns about identity theft. It later settled shareholder lawsuits prompted by the incident.

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"The combination of ChoicePoint's highly regarded data and analytics assets with LexisNexis's market leading technology can be leveraged to create greater opportunities in addressing the growing risk information and analytics needs in insurance, financial, legal, screening, law enforcement, public safety, healthcare and other sectors," Reed Elsevier said.