The personal fairness agency which owns the Las Iguanas and Cafe Rouge restaurant chains is in talks to purchase a sizeable chunk of Subsequent 15 Group, the London-listed advertising and marketing providers group.
Metropolis sources mentioned on Monday that Epiris’s supply included Subsequent 15 subsidiaries MHP Communications, a number one monetary public relations agency.
M Sales space, a client advertising and marketing operation; Outcast, one other PR company; and Activate, a business-to-business demand technology specialist, are additionally mentioned to type a part of the deal perimeter.
Ares Administration, the personal credit score big, is known to have been approached by Epiris to assist finance its supply.
Discussions between Epiris and Subsequent 15 are mentioned to be ongoing, though insiders cautioned {that a} transaction was not sure to materialise.
Subsequent 15 is a advertising and marketing providers conglomerate which is successfully a smaller reproduction of trade giants similar to Publicis and WPP, the latter of which is engulfed in strategic uncertainty.
Sir Martin Sorrell, the WPP founder who now runs S4 Capital, has additionally been in talks about taking the enterprise personal.
A sale of its Marker division would depart Subsequent 15 targeted on its remaining know-how and data-driven consumer companies.Subsequent 15 issued a revenue warning and altered its management earlier this 12 months because it disclosed “potential serious misconduct” associated to Mach49, a Silicon Valley advisory enterprise it owns.
Tim Dyson, its chief government for over three many years, has retired and been changed by Sam Knights, the boss of Shopper Media Group, one among its subsidiaries.
The group has already been engaged in promoting various items.
Subsequent 15 has a market worth of about £420m after seeing its inventory rally in latest months.
The shares, which have been buying and selling at about 404.5p on Monday afternoon, are broadly flat over the past 12 months.
Epiris, Ares and Subsequent 15 all declined to remark.
