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Carat has taken over Scottish media agency Feather Brooksbank and

will be merging it with its Manchester office to create an operation

with billings of over pounds 150 million and clients including Standard

Life, Scottish Power and the Scottish Tourist Board.

This will make it the biggest regional media agency in the UK. All of

Carat’s operations outside London will be rebranded Feather Brooksbrank.

Chris Broadbent, head of Carat Manchester, will report to Stuart

Feather, managing director of Feather Brooksbank.

Feather will report to Ray Kelly, chief executive of Carat in Northern

Europe. Kelly said: ’The new company will be in a dominant position in

the North and has enormous growth opportunities ahead of it ... I am

particularly impressed with the quality of the very successful

management team at Feather Brooksbank.’

He said retaining Feather Brooksbank’s ’exceptionally strong brand’

would work well sitting alongside Aegis’s other two UK media brands:

Carat and BBJ Media Services. He also said there was nothing else worth

buying in the UK and that further acquisitions would almost certainly be

international.

Aegis chief executive Doug Flynn said: ’Feather Brooksbank will add

extensive local expertise to Carat’s offering in Scotland and the north

of England, complementing our existing operations and providing an

excellent platform to grow our business.’

Feather said that being part of Carat would give his staff access to

greater resources such as volume, proprietary research, e-communications

and access to international services.

Carat paid an initial consideration of pounds 7.5 million for the

Scottish agency, with an earn-out package for its senior directors.

Aegis-owned Carat comprises a growing list of media operations in the

UK. These include BBJ Media Services, Carat London, Carat Manchester,

Carat Business, Carat Direct, Carat Interactive, Carat Insight and

Posterscope.