Advertising Age republished a Bloomberg News report revealing Corporate Colonizer Sir Martin Sorrell is in merger talks, whereby his S4 Capital would colonize, er, acquire MSQ Partners.
Sorrell is quick to critique his original monstrosity WPP—as well as the holding company model he developed—yet doesn’t hesitate to replay the acquisition aggressor with his latest mad man experiment.
Hey, maybe incoming WPP CEO Cindy Rose should ignite her strategic review by staging a hostile takeover of S4 Capital.
Martin Sorrell’s S4 says it’s in talks to combine with MSQ
S4 Capital Plc, the advertising agency founded by Martin Sorrell, is in talks to combine with private equity-owned MSQ Partners.
Any deal would be structured so that S4 would be taking over MSQ, though talks are at a preliminary stage and may not lead to a deal, S4 said in a statement on Monday. MSQ is owned by private equity firm One Equity Partners. S4 was responding to an earlier report about the potential combination on Sky News.
Sorrell founded S4 in 2018 after he left WPP Plc. The company has struggled at times to compete with its larger rivals and most recently warned that clients were being more cautious with spending ahead of new tariffs from the U.S. Shares have declined about 35% this year giving S4 a market value of about £131.7 million ($177 million) when the market closed on Friday.
The company had attracted takeover offers from ad firm Stagwell last year, the Wall Street Journal had reported at the time. Sorrell rebuffed the offers as too low, though his reluctance to consider bids has frustrated some of the firm’s senior officers, the Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter who it didn’t name.
—Bloomberg News
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