M&C Saatchi extends ‘put up or shut up’ deadline once again for Murria takeover
M&C Saatchi extended its “Put Up or Shut Up” deadline once again this morning for the AdvancedAdvT’s takeover bid, pushing the investment vehicle to either make a stronger offer, or walk away.
It said that the current proposal undervalues the firm, and therefore wouldn’t be recommended to its shareholders.
“While the company continues to facilitate access to provide AdvT with the opportunity to make a formal offer to the company’s shareholders, no revised proposal has been forthcoming,” the company stated.
The latest offering was made in February, where accepting Saatchi shareholders would get either 1.939 new AdvT ordinary shares and 40p in cash for each share held, or 2.347 new AdvT ordinary shares for each M&C share.
Despite months of negotiation and back and forth, the two sides can’t seem to agree on the details of its share exchange merger.
Instead, the ad giant, which boasts Uber and Google as clients, has imposed a new deadline for the acquisition vehicle company to make a formal offer or walk away for May 10.
However, the risk with this move is that after such a dragged out process, Murria, who is the biggest shareholder in the company, with a personal stake in M&C Saatchi of 12.5 per cent, could in fact call M&C’s bluff and ‘shut up’.
However, this may not be as disastrous for Saatchi as it may have once been.
Shares have climbed in recent months thanks to a strong balance sheet and impressive client wins. The company returned to growth in 2021 and proclaimed a “turning point”.
However, founded in 1995 by brothers and ad moguls Maurice and Charles Saatchi, M&C Saatchi is perhaps still remembered in City circles for the 2019 accounting scandal that rocked the agency known for its campaigns for the Conservative Party.
The accounting oversight forced the ad giant to pay a one-off £6.4m exceptional charge after auditors unearthed a shocking ’misapplication of accounting policies’.
The agency footed £11.6m-worth of adjustments to its 2018 and 2019 financial results, and at the peak of this nadir the share price took a thrashing, plummeting nearly 50 per cent.