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| Peter Finn |
Finn Partners has bought back the investment stake that it sold to Mark Penn’s Stagwell Group, and the two companies have amicably separated.
As part of the deal, Finn Partners sold its interest in the Wye Communications joint venture to Stagwell. Wye was established as a Finn Partners' conflict shop.
“Our partnership with Stagwell, which started in 2017 and lasted more than four years, served us well,” CEO Peter Finn told O’Dwyer’s. “We leveraged their minority investment to augment our growth and development in key areas around the world."
He noted that Finn Partners has nearly doubled in size since the deal was made, and he “is grateful to Stagwell for their help in making this possible.”
Finn and Penn attended high school together and have known each other for about 50 years.
Finn Partners is O’Dwyer’s No. 4 ranked firm with fee income of $109.9M in 2020.
Stagwell owns SKDKnickerbocker, Sloane & Co, Allison+Partners, Hunter and KWT Global.
Public Policy Holding Company registered 23.8 percent Q3 growth to $48.8M, with organic growth contributing 4.5 percent and the balance driven by merger & acquisition activity.
Publicis Groupe reported 3.1 percent in Q3 growth to $4B, sparked by a 3.6 percent jump North America, its biggest market.
WPP suffered a 10.2 percent drop in 1H revenues to $6.7B and a 47.8 percent plunge in operating profit to $297M.
Interpublic reported Q2 net revenues dropped 6.6 percent to $2.2B and operating income tumbled 23.4 percent to $243.7M. 
WPP has adopted a gloomier profit and sales forecast due to a deteriorating Q2 financial performance triggered by weak client spending as companies cope with the challenging economic backdrop.
