M&C Saatchi UK is currently pushing back against tech tycoon Vin Murria’s plans to do a reverse takeover of the agency.
Basically, Murria’s investment company AdvancedAdvT has laid out bold plans for taking over M&C Saatchi.
The deal currently on the table is 1.86 new by AdvancedAdvT shares for each M&C Saatchi share.
Murria is currently the top shareholder in M&C Saatchi and deputy chair, so she has a lot of skin in the game. She infamously joined the UK agency after their accounting scandal that the agency seems to be recovering from.
However, despite Murria’s ties with M&C Saatchi her play was not well received and tensions are clearly mounting. No other directors seem to be on board with the proposal.
Branding Asia reported that the agency’s independent directors declared the move was for “corporate governance reasons” and stated it would not benefit shareholders – ouch.
Of course, AdvancedAdvT disagrees with this assessment and believes an enlarged group would allow for the agency to continue its evolution and be increasingly relevant to it’s customers
Either way, it’s clear there’s some internal clashing going on – which could make the process tedious at best.
It will be interesting to see what happens next.
