LONDON (Brand Republic) 鈥 Cordiant Communications, the UK advertising and marketing group, is continuing to beef up its operations with the acquisition of German marketing and sales consultancy firm InterCom Management for £23m.
Cordiant鈥檚 80% share in Intercom will be paid for in a £6m down payment of shares, with further payments taking the total to £23m. It is the second acquisition it has made this month. It recently acquired corporate identity and design consultancy Bamber Forsyth for an undisclosed sum.
Headquartered in Mainz, InterCom has operations in Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Prague and Barcelona. Its clients include Skoda, Seat and Unilever among others.
Michael Bungey, Cordiant chief executive, said the acquisition was important because Germany was Europe鈥檚 biggest market. 鈥淚t is part of the strategy we have been pursuing for the last three years, which is to change Cordiant鈥檚 business mix by shifting it towards higher-margin, higher-growth marketing services businesses.鈥
Bungey also said Cordiant was in talks with Abernathy, MacGregor and Frank, a New York financial PR firm specialising in mergers and acquisitions, to add to its stable of companies, which includes advertising network Bates Worldwide.
In July, Cordiant pipped True North, which owns the FCB and Bozell networks, to the post to acquire US marketing and services firm Lighthouse for £360m, making it the 10th largest agency group in the world.