AdvertisersAgenciesCreativeFinanceMediaNews

Accenture Interactive tipped to bid for M&C Saatchi

The M&C Saatchi share price is up this morning, raising the troubled agency’s market valuation to £90m from the £70m it fell to last week after M&C revealed a whopper £11.6m provision for accounting errors.

This, the boys in dark glasses (as some City traders used to termed) is a pretty sure sign a bid is on the way and the talk in UK adland is that it’s coming from Accenture Interactive. £90m is a bite-sized snack for Accenture although they’d no doubt prefer it to be £70m.

The big attraction for Accenture is said to be M&C Sport and Entertainment, M&C’s thriving marketing and sponsorship division. M&C also has its flagship creative agency, below-the-line firm Lida, its international network of partly-owned agencies and some other niche businesses.

But sport and entertainment is where much of the action is now in advertising and media and Accenture apears to think that buying M&C’s operation would give it a valuable leg up.

Accenture, which now owns creative agencies Droga5 (in the US and UK), the UK’s Karmarama, The Monkeys in Australia and Rothco in Ireland among several others, would have some hard choices to make in a deal for the whole of M&C, not least about people.

Maybe it intends just to bid for the sport and entertainment division. M&C shareholders, sitting on big losses (a year ago the whole company was valued at £400m), would no doubt be grateful for any Accenture move.

Back to top button