Clemenger shareholders approve BBDO’s $150m offer to lift its stake from 46.7 to 73.7 per cent
January 29 2011, 9:31 am | | 11 Comments
The SMH reports that shareholders in Australasia’s largest marketing services company, Clemenger Group, voted overwhelmingly in favour of a $150 million offer by the New York global marketing services company Omnicom to lift its stake from 46.7 to 73.7 per cent.
At meetings held simultaneously in Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland, the directors and staff agreed to sell half their shares at $6.43 a share, a 70 per cent-plus premium on the current valuation of $3.75 – calculated each November by Ernst & Young.
With just under 4 million shares, Clemenger Group chairman Robert Morgan (pictured) is Clemenger’s largest local shareholder and stands to make $12.8 million from the sale of 2 million shares at this stage of the deal.
11 Comments
Ker-ching
Yeah baby!!!! Suck that Patts!!!!!
Where’s Emma in this?
$12.8 million for Morgan?
Wow
10:26 and 10:21. What a ridiculous statement to make. The only people that benefit from this sell-out are Bob Morgan and the other big fishes, obviously on their way out to a more than comfortable retirement. The rest of the small fry minority stakeholders, employees et all, while making a modest profit, will loose the freedom of being masters of their own destiny. This was a move orchestrated by the big boys so they could cash out at the expense of losing Clemenger’s soul. It’s a sad day.
It sounds like a lot of money but actually they sold out way too cheaply…and they know it.
Anybody want to punt on how long Morgan and the big boys will hang around.
I’ll give it no more than a year or two.
Hmm. Yeah… Sit in flouro lit office above Barbarinos all day or a sun lit beach on Barbados. Tough choice.
Thing is though, Morgan, like everyone else will only be selling half his shares. He’ll still have roughly $7mil locked up in the company. If I had that kind of interest in a business, I’d be hanging about a bit.
If you work in Admin, Finance, IT or Media at any Clems-owned agency beware the ides of March
It’s Omnicom. There’s a lot of pretty good shops/work 2009-2010 that come out of their portfolio.
Suck that Patts????
You dolt.
Clems selling out to offshore management will be the best thing that’s happened to Patts in years.
Clem’s unique place in Australian advertising – having the grunt of a global with the heart and soul of a local – will be lost forever. And all agencies that compete with them will be the beneficiaries.
They won’t fall over, but they’ll definitely lose one of the things that makes them so unique and powerful in this market. And life gets a little easier for the rest of us non-clems people.
It won’t happen overnight, but… you know the rest.
Who said “Suck that Patts”?
Mate, you’re way off target – the people at Clems are way behind Patts yet again.
The smart pricks who ran Patts through the 80s and 90s sold the place THREE TIMES, buying bits of it back a couple of times in between.
Pretty hard to beat.
Of course, they destroyed one of the world’s great ad agencies doing it, but hey, they got rich doing it, so that makes it all okay.
Just something for everyone at Clems to look forward to.