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Finsbury Glover Hering, which is majority-owned by WPP, is merging with Sard Verbinnen & Co. to create a firm they say chalked up $330M in combined 2020 revenues and will have more than 1,000 staffers in 25 offices throughout the world.
The transaction values the combined group at $917M and SVC at $303M. FGH, which had gross assets of $426.8M at year-end 2020, registered pre-tax profit of $53.5M.
SVC earned $36.4M on $52.2M in gross assets.
Headquartered in New York, FGH CEO Alexander Geiser and COO Sydney Neuhaus will continue as leaders of the combined entity.
SVC co-founder George Sard will join FGH’s Roland Rudd and Carter Eskew as co-chairmen.
The merger combines two firms with a “heritage of delivering for our clients at their most high-pressure moments,” Sard and SVB co-founder Paul Verbinnen said in a statement.
It creates a strategic communications powerhouse in government affairs, corporate reputation and crisis management as well as a leader in financial communications with strengths in M&A activity, private equity, IPOs, SPACs, shareholder activism and restructurings.
WPP will own 57.4 percent of FGH-SVC. FGH/SVC managers will control about 40 percent. The transaction is expected to be completed by the end of the year and the company will have a new name in 2022.
WPP chief Cindy Rose is cutting up to 1,000 jobs by the end of the year, adding to the 11K jobs lost since the start of 2025, according to a report in the Financial Times.
WPP CEO Cindy Rose declares her stabilization plan is "firmly on track" as the company reports a 4.7 percent dip in 1H revenues.
FTI Consulting reported a 2.6 percent drop in Q2 strategic communications revenues to $100M, a shortfall largely due to a $7.4M decline in pass-through revenues.
Omnicom CEO John Wren reported a 7.2 percent rise in Q2 “core operations” to $6B and a 6.1 percent spurt on an organic basis.
Publicis Groupe’s H1 net revenues inched ahead by 1.1 percent to $8.3B. Organic growth hit the 4.7 percent mark.
