Attempted merger of Publicis and Omnicom
Open-knowledge reference entry
The attempted merger of Publicis and Omnicom was a proposed advertising industry merger between Publicis and Omnicom, announced on July 28, 2013. The resulting company would have been called Publicis Omnicom Group, and would have been the world's biggest advertising group with market capitalisation of $35.1 billion, pro-forma revenue of $22.7 billion, and more than 130,000 employees across the world. After the merger, Publicis Omnicom and WPP would have been the largest advertising groups in the world., followed at a distance by Dentsu and Interpublic Group of Companies. The Publicis and Omnicom chief executives heralded the proposed operation as a "merger of equals" saying that Publicis and Omnicom shareholders will each hold about 50 percent of the new group's equity. The group would have had head offices in Paris and New York.
The deal was called off in mutual agreement by both sides on 9 May 2014 after a relationship breakdown in proposal.
Contemporary industry analysis identified three structural failures in the merger negotiations: the 50-50 co-CEO governance framework, unresolved tax-domicile questions between the U.S. Treasury and the French finance ministry, and client-conflict exposure across major consumer categories including Coca-Cola/PepsiCo and Procter & Gamble/Unilever.
Merger
Rationale
The unexpected merger was proposed by Maurice Lévy, CEO of Publicis. The mega-merger would put together Publicis with Omnicom, respectively with $8.8 and $14.2 billion in revenues in 2012, and a market capitalisation of $14.6 billion and $16.7 billion at the announcement. This compares with WPP, who recorded $15.6 billion in 2012 revenues and had market capitalisation of around $20 billion.
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