Sir Martin Sorrell, the promoting mogul, has obtained quite a few merger approaches for S4 Capital, the London-listed advertising companies group he based seven years in the past.
Sky Information can reveal that Sir Martin has been contacted in current weeks by potential suitors together with One Fairness Companions, a US-based non-public fairness agency which focuses on buying firms within the healthcare, industrials, and know-how sectors.
This weekend, analysts steered that One Fairness would search to mix S4 Capital with MSQ, a artistic and know-how company group it purchased in 2023.
Additional particulars of the potential tie-up had been unclear on Saturday, together with whether or not a proper proposal had been made or whether or not S4 Capital would possibly stay listed on the London Inventory Trade if a deal had been to be accomplished.
S4 Capital can also be understood to have attracted current curiosity from different events, the identities of which couldn’t be instantly established.
In March 2024, the Wall Road Journal reported that Sir Martin had rebuffed a number of affords from Stagwell, an promoting group led by Mark Penn, a former adviser to President Invoice Clinton.
New Mountain Capital, one other American non-public fairness agency, was additionally mentioned on the time to have held talks about shopping for elements or all of S4 Capital.
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Information of One Fairness’s method places the enterprise based by one among Britain’s most distinguished enterprise figures firmly in play after a torrid interval through which it has been buffeted by macroeconomic headwinds and quite a few accounting points.
Sir Martin based S4 Capital in 2018, months after his sudden and acrimonious departure from WPP, the group he reworked from a producer of wire baskets into the world’s largest supplier of promoting companies.
The businessman, who has voting management at S4 Capital, used his deep community of institutional relationships to boost cash for an acquisition spree at S4, which included technology-focused companies equivalent to MediaMonks and MightyHive.
S4’s shoppers now embody Alphabet, Amazon, Common Motors, Meta, T-Cellular, and Walmart.
Sir Martin’s determination to focus on acquisitions within the digital content material and programmatic media arenas mirrored the priorities of what he described as a advertising companies group for a brand new period.
At WPP, he was the architect of a now-widely replicated technique to assemble a whole lot of company manufacturers below one holding firm.
By the point he stepped down, WPP was the proprietor of artistic company networks equivalent to JWT and Ogilvy, whereas its media-buying muscle was channelled by the worldwide subsidiary GroupM.
The most recent approaches for S4 Capital come throughout a interval of profound change within the world advertising companies business, as synthetic intelligence dismantles practices and inventive processes that had developed over many years.
Sir Martin has spurned few alternatives to criticise his successor at WPP, Mark Learn, in addition to the broader promoting business, within the seven years since he established S4 Capital.
Final month, WPP introduced that Mr Learn would get replaced by Cindy Rose, a senior Microsoft government who has sat on the corporate’s board as a non-executive director since 2019.
“Cindy has supported the digital transformation of huge enterprises around the globe – together with embracing AI to create new buyer experiences, enterprise fashions and income streams,” the WPP chairman, Philip Jansen, mentioned.
“Her experience on this panorama shall be vastly invaluable to WPP because the business navigates basic adjustments and macroeconomic uncertainty.”
WPP has additionally forfeited its standing because the world’s largest advertising companies empire to Publicis, and shall be shunted even additional behind the sector’s greatest gamers as soon as Omnicom Group’s $13.25bn (£9.85bn) takeover of Interpublic Group is accomplished.
On the time of Sir Martin’s exit from WPP in April 2018, the corporate had a market capitalisation of greater than £16bn.
On Friday, its market worth at its closing share value of 367.5p was simply £4.23bn.
Final month, the promoting business information outlet Marketing campaign reported that WPP had held tentative discussions with the consulting agency Accenture a couple of potential mixture or partnership, underscoring the stress on legacy advertising companies teams.
This weekend, it remained unclear how probably it was that Sir Martin would consummate a deal to mix S4 Capital with one other business participant equivalent to One Fairness-owned MSQ.
Shares in S4 Capital closed on Friday at 21.2p, giving the corporate a market capitalisation of £140m.
The inventory has fallen by practically 60% over the last 12 months, and is greater than 90% decrease than its peak in 2022.
At one level, Sir Martin’s stake in S4 Capital was valued at near £500m.
A spokeswoman for S4 declined to remark, whereas a spokesman for One Fairness Companions mentioned by e-mail: “OEP shouldn’t be commenting on this matter.”
