Finn Partners Acquires Ying Communications

Finn Partners announced that it has acquired Singapore-based B2B PR and marketing agency Ying Communications. 

The acquisition comes from a 100 percent purchase of Ying parent company Ying Pte Ltd and includes sister agency True Worth Consultants. Financial terms of the deal were not publicly disclosed.

Ying provides B2B communications services with a primary focus on the tech sector. The agency, which staffs 35, was founded in 2001 by Allan Tan, a former IBM Singapore and Shell Eastern Petroleum communication manager; and Yin Ching Yeap, an IBM Singapore and Singapore Airlines veteran. Clients include Airbus, Cisco Systems, Cognizant, Cloudera, HP Enterprise, HP Inc, MediaMath, Microsoft, Pure Storage, SES, S&P Global Platts and Tableau.

The company will henceforth be known as Ying Communications, a Finn Partners company. True Worth will similarly be titled True Worth Consultants, a Finn Partners Company.

Finn Partners founding partner Peter Finn, with Ying Communications founders Allan Tan (L) and Yin Ching Yeap (R).

Tan and Yeap now wear the titles of managing partners. They’ll report to managing partner Howard Solomon, who is based in San Francisco and heads the Finn Partners West outpost, which includes its Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland offices.

Ying will also retain its current Singapore offices. No staffing changes will occur as a result of the merger.

The acquisition officially extends Finn Partners’ inaugural footprint into the Asia Pacific region. The New York-based agency, which maintains ten offices throughout the U.S., also holds three outposts in Europe as well as an office in the Middle East.

“With their expertise in B2B tech, Ying Communications provides Finn Partners — which already counts tech as its biggest practice area — with expanding synergies in providing exciting new services to our clients as well as increasing new business opportunities,” Finn Partners founding partner Peter Finn told O’Dwyer’s.  “Ying is also an ideal fit; we share the same overarching belief in the power of collaboration and a dedication to the core values of working hard and playing nice, the foundation of growing and maintaining a Best Place to Work culture.”

Finn Partners’ latest agency buy continues an ongoing acquisition wave for the global independent agency. Last year, Finn Partners acquired Portland-based independent shop Lane PR, as well as Washington, D.C.-based branding and marketing services shop Greenfield Belser. The year prior, it acquired San Francisco-based tech agency Horn Group, a deal that followed Finn Partners’ 2014 acquisition of New York-based health and education firm gabbegroup, and 2013’s purchase of Washington-based Widmeyer Communications.

Finn Partners last year was also the site of a preferred stock purchase from Stagwell Group, the marketing investment company headed by polling guru and former Burson-Marsteller CEO Mark Penn.

Global M&A advisor SI Partners advised Ying in the deal.