French advertising group Publicis has agreed to buy Alliance Data System's Epsilon marketing unit, a deal valued by some media reports at around $4,5 billion.
Publicis' shares rose on Monday as analysts welcomed the French advertising company's biggest takeover yet.
This new acquisition is designed to expand Publicis' digital business and strengthen its position, and presence in the United States, where it competes with Omnicom, Interpublic and WPP, thanks to assets that fit the group's strategy and bring an enhanced service to the group's clients, while reinforcing its competitiveness for the future.
"When you look at the increasing challenges that our clients are facing in this data-led and digital-first world, we thought that Epsilon can bring to our existing assets in creativity and technology an acceleration in data and platform that will position us as a clear leader in personalized experience at-scale,” Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Arthur Sadoun said.
Sadoun assured the deal won’t have an impact on the company’s headcount, which was about 80,000. Epsilon has about 9,000 employees, including 3,700 data experts and 2,000 engineers based in India.
Publicis has made other recent takeovers, buying French data marketing company Soft Computing earlier this year and acquiring Czech firm Kindred Group last year.
