Online and print directory business Yellow has been given a reprieve by its new shareholders.

Debt-laden directory service Yellow has officially been given a new lease on life.

Creditors of NZ Directories Holdings, the owner of the struggling Yellow business, have agreed to swap some of their debt for equity in the company.

Yellow, which owed $468 million to 12 creditors, will now have "materially less" debt, it said in a statement.

The board had previously said failure to approve the restructuring plan would result in receivership or liquidation.

Yellow chairman Brett Chenoweth said the changes would "unshackle" the business to become more nimble and responsive.

"This sets the company up for sustainable success and there will be no need to go through this process again."

Chenoweth said the underlying business, which had delivered $65m in cash to its shareholders last year, remained unchanged.

Yellow chief executive Michael Boersen said Yellow was continuing its push into digital, which was earning 36 percent of total revenue, and growing.

The new company, Yellow Holdings, will include New Zealand Directories IP, Yellow Pages Group and its subsidiary, Finda.

Yellow, which produces the Yellow and White Pages, was previously sold by Telecom to a private equity consortium for $2.2 billion in 2007.

But the firms paid far too much for the business, as consumers increasingly turned to internet search engines such as Google rather than print directories.

A consortium of bank lenders took control of the company in 2011, writing off $1b of the $1.8b loans that had been used to finance the original purchase.

Since then the company has repaid $282m of debt.