Aegis shareholders approve sale to Dentsu

By Maisie McCabe, campaignlive.co.uk, Friday, 17 August 2012 01:30PM

Dentsu's £3.16bn takeover of Aegis Group, owner of the networks Carat and Isobar, moved closer to completion yesterday when Aegis' shareholders voted overwhelmingly in favour of the deal.

Tadashi Ishii, president & CEO of Dentsu Inc and Jerry Buhlmann, chief executive of Aegis Group

At Aegis Group’s extraordinary general meeting yesterday 99.9% of the shareholders who voted, voted in favour of the resolution to approve Dentsu’s bid of 240p per share.

Aegis already has approval from its major shareholder, French businessman Vincent Bollore. Bollore sold 14.9% of the company to Dentsu after the deal was announced on 12 July and has committed to selling the remaining 11.5%.

The deal is being looked at by competition authorities in a number of markets but is not expected to raise any major issues and on Wednesday (15 August) it received approval from the German Federal Cartel Office.

Interested parties in the UK have until 24 August to comment to the Office of Fair Trading. The OFT is obliged to make a decision on or before 10 September.

The deal is expected to complete in the fourth quarter of 2012 once it has clearance from competition authorities around the world.

Today Aegis’ shares are being traded at around 237p each but at the end of 11 July, the day before the deal was announced, they were changing hands at 163.17p each, meaning Dentsu’s offer was at a 48% premium.

The addition of Aegis’s five networks (Posterscope, Vizeum and iProspect alongside Carat and Isobar) will transform Dentsu’s reach outside of its home market of Japan, enabling it to become a major player alongside WPP, Publicis and Omnicom.

This article was first published on campaignlive.co.uk