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WPP and Hellman & Friedman have announced that they will not make a bid to acquire Aegis Group, according to Adweek. WPP has said that the company submitted an indicative proposal to the board of Aegis on Nov. 16 outlining two offers - one by WPP and H&F, and another by WPP, H&F, and a third party (presumably Vincent Bollore) - but Aegis said in a statement that WPP and H&F’s offer price was below the price in the indicative proposal made by Publicis and that subsequently there was no basis for any continuing dialog.
According to Mediapost, WPP and H&F had said they were attempting to form a new company involving a third stakeholder which would have resulted in an offer that would have been in excess of Publicis’s potential offer (valued at approximately $2.8 billion). But Aegis said that the board was not asked to consider any proposal involving any other party.
Meanwhile, French corporate raider Vincent Bollore - who also controls rival Havas - has increased his stake in Aegis so that it has topped the critical 25 percent line, which gives him blocking minority shareholder vetoing power, AdAge writes. Industry speculation has it that Bollore wishes to combine Havas’s creative advertising capabilities with Aegis’s media buying assets to allow the new entity to compete on a grand scale in the global market.
While WPP and H&F are prohibited from bidding for Aegis anytime in the next six months, Bollore is under no such stricture. If Bollore plans to make a bid for Aegis, he is expected to do so before Dec. 15, when he plans to unveil his long-term plan for Havas.
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