Finance

Is ‘Brand Damage’ a consideration for the City? A financial journalist in the business press last weekend referred to ‘brand damage’ in a piece about M&S (which reported its annual profits today). It is the first time I’ve read this ...

Mergers of equals are rather out of fashion at the moment following the Omnicom/Publicis fiasco but that hasn’t stopped Dixons and Carphone Warehouse tying the knot (as we forecast on Monday). The £3.7bn merger looks a reasonable fit on the ...

Dentsu/Aegis is on a roll (it recently won Microsoft’s $2bn media business) and the Aegis bit (bought by Dentsu for $5bn in March last year) seems to be making the running as the enlarged holding company challenges the likes of ...

In the blue corner we have WPP’s Sir Martin Sorrell and in the red corner my friend George Parker of Adscam fame. And this particular fight (they’ve had the odd tussle over the years)? Who, if anyone, is going to ...

Guinness global strategy and communications director Grainne Wafer says the Diageo-owned brand is looking for a new global agency. “To drive better integration between idea generation and multi-channel execution we are looking to appoint a new agency to lead content ...

This should be interesting – RB (Reckitt Benckiser as was) has hired creative hotshots Droga5 in New York and Wieden+Kennedy HQ to handle three of its bigger global brands: Airwick and Clearasil for Droga5 and Finish for W+K. Interesting that ...

John Wren, CEO of Omnicom, has sworn never again to attempt a merger of equal partners in the wake of the collapsed deal with Publicis. As the wisdom of M&A specialists would say: “there is not such a thing as ...

It would be interesting to know how much Dixons’ and Carphone Warehouse’s respective agencies – AMV/BBDO and CHI & Partners – knew about the two companies’ proposed £4bn merger. The two are expected to announce the terms this week which ...

***Before we embark on more musings about the collapsed Omnicom/Publicis deal, one of my spies tells me about a thwarted coup by Eric Newnham’s Talon to lure big UK outdoor advertiser Warner Brothers away from WPP-owned Kinetic. Talon is in ...