The earn-out model has been the gold standard for the 20+ years that I have been doing mergers and acquisitions. It is a proven, fair model used by all major PR firm buyers from holding company firm buyers to mid-size firm buyers to bolt-on firm buyers. The appeal and benefit of the earn-out model is…
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Category: Mergers & Acquisitions
Psychological Buy-in Critical for Exit Strategy
Amid the dramatic and ongoing changes within the marketing communications industries is the accelerating rate of M&A transactions within the PR field. PR firm owners, including heads of boutiques, smaller shops and mid-size firms, are giving more serious consideration to selling. Many of these owners are products of the baby-boom generation and would like to…
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Post-Merger Integration Plan Critical for Long-Term Success
The PR transaction has closed. The buyer wires a multi-million-dollar transfer into the seller’s bank account. The staff members of both buyer and seller are notified. The press release announcing the deal has been distributed across the business wires online, sprinkled with quotes regarding a “win-win” for both firms, and, naturally, “new digital and marketing…
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The Value of Human Capital
The term “Human Capital” is offensive to some. They see it as treating people as material objects. I hope to build a greater appreciation that the character, competence and commitment of a firm’s professional talent has a major impact on its valuation in an M&A situation. That acknowledgement, together with other recommendations, are intended to…
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Padilla Acquisition by Avenir Global
Montreal/Toronto-based holding and management company Avenir Global- (parent company of NATIONAL) has acquired Padilla. We are delighted & honored to share that we introduced & facilitated the merging of two great firms. Rick Gould, Managing Partner said, “We worked closely with Avenir Global (then NATIONAL) in…
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VIDEO: PR Benefits of the Bolt-on Acquisition
Expand your firm’s talent pool. Diversify your PR services and boost the agency’s appeal among both existing clients and prospects. Find new cost efficiencies. These are just a few of the PR benefits of the bolt-on acquisition. Unlike a full-blown acquisition, bolt-on buys are relatively small and won’t break the bank. However, similar to larger…
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Gould+Partners Facilitates Finn Partners Acquisition of ABI Marketing Pubic Relations
New York, NY. Sept. 22, 2017 — Gould+Partners is pleased to announce that it introduced the parties and facilitated Finn Partners recent acquisition of ABI Marketing Public Relations, a global marketing and PR firm focused on industrial and trade markets catering to B2B companies. “Knowing the strategic needs of Finn Partners and the global presence…
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How Should PR Firms Plan for the End Game?
(This article originally appeared in the June issue of O’Dwyer’s) The PR M&A process is seldom easy. But as the public relations industry has evolved and become more complex, so too has the PR M&A process. When sellers sit down with buyers these days there are sharper and more difficult questions coming from both sides of…
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Agency M&A: Big Decision, Vital Questions
I had the privilege of speaking at the Public Relations Global Network‘s (PRGN) annual conference, which took place in Dallas, in late April. The presentation, titled “Agency Mergers and Acquisitions: What Works, What Doesn’t,” was well-received among the PR firm owners and C-level communications executives attending. During my presentation and afterward—when I had the opportunity…
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How to Integrate the Seller With the Buyer, Post-Sale
I am often asked why some mergers and/or acquisitions don’t go the way a buyer and/or seller originally thought. There are multiple reasons why a transaction may go awry, of course. For instance, the seller may have a different corporate philosophy from the buyer. Or there may be friction between the two sides regarding how…
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Looking for a Court and Spark
You’re eager for a spark. You hope there’s good chemistry and scintillating conversation. If things go well during the first meeting a second meeting may hold promise for both the present and, perhaps most important, the future. It’s a fair description of dating. But it’s also an apt description of the courtship between prospective buyers…
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Benchmarking Report Shows Firm Profitability Declining
We’ve just released our latest industry benchmarking study, and the overall results aren’t very pretty. Most troubling: The industry’s overall profitability keeps falling, down to 15.3 percent in 2015, compared with 16.2 percent in 2014 and 15.8 percent in 2013. It was 18.8 percent in 2012. The results are based on 106 firms reporting their…
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