Advertising. The fur is flying at WPP where the world’s largest marketing services group is competing with its founder and former CEO Sir Martin Sorrell in an apparent €300m (£265m) bidding war for MediaMonks, the Dutch-owned digital production company. Sorrell’s S4 Capital wants to make MediaMonks its first acquisition. The 17-year-old Hilversum-based company employs some 600 people, principally in the UK, US and Brazil and is described as a prolific creator of digital work for major brands including Audi, KFC, Uber, Lego and Mercedes. The agency describes its productions as being “crafted with care, coded by coffee, celebrated by champagne”. But WPP has cranked up the pressure by threatening that Sorrell will lose his £20m WPP deferred bonus if he doesn’t back off. Its letter from solicitor Slaughter & May claims he is “likely to be in breach of his confidentiality obligations” which implies that MediaMonks was a documented target of WPP from Sorrell’s days. Sounds pretty soggy, and most insiders believe it is nearly a done deal for Sorrell. Meanwhile, he has sought shareholder approval to raise S4 Capital’s acquisition funding to £1bn. We still think Ebiquity, the UK-based and thinly-global data group, is also in his sights. Or should be.
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Sorrell and WPP fight for digital biz
