As of Monday, the great winners of Wall Street were Americans Interpublic Group and MDC Partners, as well as French giant Havas.
That day, mere hours after the Publicis-Omnicom IPG's shares rose as much as 9.8% reaching a 52-week high of $17.43, before closing at $16.61, a 4.7% increase on the day. Havas also hit a 52-week peak and closed at 5.66 euros, up 4.6%. MDC shares also closed at an all-time high, rising 4% to $24.
Compare those numbers to Publicis. Shares finished flat at 59.40 euros despite a 6.6% jump, whilst Omnicom finished down 0.6% at $64.75, despite an initial peak of 8.3%.
In a memo to employees, IPG chief executive Michael Roth wrote:
For some time now, we have been competing effectively in the media arena with an offering that was smaller in scale than that of our peers...there is the question of whether we intend to link up with another agency in order to remain competitive. As this weekend's surprising news shows, there's no telling what might take place, but we don't see the need for major M&A to keep delivering on our plan to move Interpublic forward. There's nothing about scale that makes for better creative ideas, or leads to better integration of marketing disciplines. We are confident in the quality and competitiveness of our digital and media offerings, and well positioned in emerging markets.
David Jones, CEO at Havas, took to Twitter to concur with Mr Roth.
Clients today want us to be faster, more agile, more nimble & entrepreneurial, not bigger & more bureaucratic & more complex
— david jones (@davidjoneshavas) July 27, 2013
"It's a massively interesting and surprising move," Jones later said.
"The industry's obsession with mergers and acquisitions
still amazes me particularly in a world where digital and
technology have made scale irrelevant. Our business is very simple - it's about clients and
talented employees - and as I said, I'm not sure this move is
good for either of them."
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