UK’s tech queen is snubbed by Saatchi

M&C Saatchi has rebuffed a takeover approach from deputy chairman and tech tycoon Vin Murria.

The advertising agency’s independent directors – excluding 59year-old Murria – said they could not see how the deal would benefit the company. They added that winning a series of big-name clients such as Uber, Google, TikTok and Tinder showed its existing strategy was already working.

Murria’s investment vehicle Advanced Advt proposed launching an all-share reverse takeover that would see it absorb M&C Saatchi. M&C Saatchi investors would receive 1.86 shares in the combined group.

Murria’s company said its management expertise and extra funding, when combined with M&C Saatchi’s high-profile brand, would allow the new group to expand by buying new companies. But M&C Saatchi said the independent directors did not believe the approach articulated ‘an alternative strategy’ beyond changing who owned the group.

Shares fell 12.4pc, or 26p, at 184p, giving it a value of £225m.

Advanced Advt has not yet made a formal offer and has until early February to make one.

Murria is M&C Saatchi’s biggest shareholder, with a 12.5pc stake, and earlier this week Advanced Advt declared a 9.8pc holding.

Brothers Maurice and Charles Saatchi founded M&C Saatchi in 1995 after an American activist investor ousted them from their firm, Saatchi & Saatchi, which was behind Margaret Thatcher’s ‘Labour Isn’t Working’ campaign. Clients have included Burberry, Apple and chocolatier Lindt.