The news follows reports this morning that Havas chairman Vincent Bollore had upped his stake in the British firm, which owns Carat and Vizeum, to 12.63%.
Word that Bollore had increased his stake followed a statement issued by Aegis that said it had held talks with two potential buyers. One of those is Publicis Groupe and the other was thought by analysts to be Omnicom.
Now with the field of potential buyers filling up, a bidding war is likely. Sir Martin Sorrell's WPP is unlikely to be able to bid without exciting interest from competition authorities. It already owns three media buying networks in MediaCom, Mediaedge:cia and MindShare. Adding Carat could be seen as a step too far.
However, sources quoted by Reuters suggest that WPP is only interested in the Aegis-owned market research network Synovate. If it did pitch in the rest of the business would then be broken up and sold on.
The prospect of bidding war has pushed up Aegis's share price to 144.5p this afternoon, after it had remained steady at 140p for the last week.
Hellman & Friedman is interested in the main prize -- the media buying networks Carat and Vizeum, which sees its interest dovetail with WPP's, making a joint bid possible.
WPP has been steadily growing its market research business through its Kantar operation, which includes Millward Brown.
Hellman previous owned a stake in Young & Rubicam, which is now part of WPP, and it was also in the race to buy Grey Global, now also part of Sorrell's empire.
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