Next Fifteen Communications has reached an agreement to buy British ad agency M&C Saatchi for just over £310 million. The cash and shares acquisition has blown Vin Murria’s £254 million bid made earlier this week clean out of the water.
The London based digital comms firm’s ambitious acquisition of global advertising powerhouse M&C Saatchi paves the way for the creation of a new giant in the digital marketing and consultancy sectors.
Vin Murria, who is M&C Saatchi deputy chair, is the biggest single shareholder at the firm, and controls 22%. Prior to Next Fifteen’s acquisition she had had four bids rejected by the M&C Saatchi board, who feared that a takeover by Murria would lead to an exodus of both talent and clients.
The bid was unanimously favoured by the M&C Saatchi board, which felt that Vin Murria’s offer significantly undervalued the firm.
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M&C Saatchi CEO, Moray MacLennan sees the merger as powerful accelerator for the agency, broadening and “turbocharging its next phase of growth”.
“This is an exciting opportunity to bring together two highly complementary businesses creating a truly global and diversified group with exceptional capabilities, clients and talent,” Next Fifteen CEO, Tim Dyson said.
“Bringing M&C Saatchi into the Next Fifteen group provides us with a step change in our scale and global reach, and an enhanced ability to offer digitally driven solutions to growth-minded organisations.”
M&C Saatchi chairman Gareth Davis added: “The M&C Saatchi Independent Directors are pleased to unanimously recommend this alternative, more attractive offer which we are confident is in the best interests of M&C Saatchi Shareholders and M&C Saatchi’s other key stakeholders.
The M&C Saatchi independent directors all consider Next Fifteen’s offer to be far superior to the offer announced earlier this week by ADV, and a clear repudiation of ADV’s response statement that it strongly disagreed its bid undervalued M&C Saatchi.”
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