While a busy year overall, 2015 was a fairly quiet one in terms of big pure-marcomms M&A activity, for obvious reasons – there aren’t that many large independent properties for the big groups to snap up; most of them have been bought! With Publicis’ multi-billion-dollar purchase last February of the Sapient group, there are virtually […]
Whether a business’s planned exit route is via a trade sale, management buy out or an IPO, there are two key financial elements that will enhance value: 1. Ensuring operational excellence, and here we are talking about size, market positioning, client spread, team, growth strategy and having decent financials and 2. Being prepared for the […]
For some time now WPP has been the most acquisitive of all the global holding companies, making numerous smaller acquisitions in dynamic, fast-growing territories, with the odd big deal from time to time. Last week (4 November) the group announced one of its biggest and most intriguing deals of 2015 – it bought a majority […]
Last month ITV, the UK’s largest free-to-air commercial broadcaster, celebrated its 60th anniversary. ITV (that’s both the ITV network, as well as ITV plc, which owns the network along with STV Group) is now such a part of the broadcasting landscape that it’s hard to imagine that it was once regarded as a threat to […]
There’s been a lot of talk these past few days about ad blockers, those clever little apps and web browser widgets that stop you getting bugged by advertising. No wonder – when Apple, one of the most-watched and most-followed tech companies in the world, does something (in this case, allowing ad blockers on its mobile […]
Last week media agency Zenith Optimedia published a report about mobile advertising, and how mobile ad spend will overtake that for print advertising for the first time. It was a timely report, for a week later (16 September) News Corp, owner of UK newspapers the Times, Sunday Times and the Sun, bought digital ad firm […]
One of the big stories of recent weeks has of course been the apparently parlous state of the Chinese economy, which had a lot of commentators, investors and journalists gnawing at their fingernails early last week. You can see why. China is the world’s second-biggest economy, and its growth fuels our growth. Our economic wellbeing […]
This week I thought we’d take a look at a subject we’ve not covered before – the regional press. Time was, 20 or 30 years ago, that publishing a local or regional paper was practically a licence to print money. In the days before the internet, or so-called hyper-local bloggers, local papers were the best […]
So, why all the fuss about Google rebranding itself as Alphabet? Why all the news coverage, and why the 5 per cent spike in the tech giant’s share price as soon as the rebrand was announced? First of all, we have to remember this is Google we’re talking about, one of the world’s biggest tech […]
Far be it for me to question how Sir Martin Sorrell and WPP go about their business, but my first thoughts whilst on holiday when I heard that WPP was to buy out Chime Communications was: “Why?” After all, on the surface at least, it looks like a very unusual move. Firstly, £374m is approximately […]