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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.
S&P Global has reaffirmed its negative “BBB” rating on WPP due to ongoing challenges that it will face during the next 12 months.
Stagwell’s Q4 revenues grew two percent to $807M while adjusted EBITDA rose three percent to $129M.
WPP CEO Cindy Rose unveiled “Elevate 28,” a strategic plan to simplify the troubled company, which reported a 5.4 percent drop in 2025 revenues to $13.6B.
Omnicom CEO John Wren reported a Q4 $977.2M operating loss, largely due to the $1.1B in severance and repositioning expenses connected to the $13B Interpublic takeover that closed on Nov. 26.
Publicis Groupe reports an 8.8 percent rise in 2025 net revenues to $16.4B with
