Stock market investors will give their first verdict today on Sir Martin Sorrell's new Media Monks-led business after the completion of his reverse takeover of Derriston plc.
With the process of combining Sorrell’s private investment vehicle S4 Capital with publicly listed cash shell Derriston complete, investors now have a chance to buy and sell shares according to their confidence in the former WPP chief’s prospects of repeating his past achievements.
When the market opens at 8am today, Derriston will be renamed S4 Capital and Sorrell will take over as executive chairman with an 18.16% shareholding.
Sorrell also owns a special B share that bears the right to veto executive hiring and firing, shareholder resolutions (except those required by law), as well as acquisitions and disposals by the company or its subsidiaries of assets valued over £100,000. This also gives him the power to appoint a director.
Investors in MediaMonks will have 18.25% of the company, as well as an as-yet-undisclosed additional sum in cash, in exchange for joining forces with Sorrell.
Institutional and other investors will have 54.44%, affiliate subscribers 3.59% and the employee benefit trust 4.58%.
The non-executive directors, Rupert Faure Walker and Paul Roy, will own the remaining 0.97%.
Commenting on yesterday's news that WPP was merging Y&R with VML, Sorrell said: "For what it’s worth, I would have branded it Y&R/VML, particularly as the VML management (rightly, in my view) have the key positions. It would have been more sensitive and magnanimous."
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