WPP Will Buy Tempus

Following months of wrangling and speculation WPP has conceded its efforts to withdraw from the take-over of Tempus Group and is now prepared to go through with the £434 million deal.

Yesterday the Takeover Panel released a statement detailing their reasons for dismissing WPP’s appeal to withdraw their initial 555p-a-share offer and WPP followed this with an announcement that they are taking the appeal process no further.

The Takeover Panel stated that it had considered the submissions of both parties and that whilst it agreed that economic conditions had suffered, post- 11 September, it believed that “WPP had failed to demonstrate that between 7 September and 22 October there was a material adverse change in the context of the bid such as to entitle them to invoke the material adverse change condition, and had so failed by a considerable margin. The appeal, therefore, failed.”

As predicted, WPP has now decided to get on with the process of buying Tempus and will not make any further appeals to the Takeover Panel. In a statement yesterday WPP said: “Throughout the bid process, the board of WPP has remained convinced of the long-term strategic benefits of combining WPP with Tempus, particularly in connection with the merger of CIA (Tempus’s main media buying network) and TME (WPP’s The Media Edge) and the combination of the Tempus strategic marketing businesses with WPP’s strategic marketing consultancies. WPP’s objective is now for both management teams to work closely together to integrate the two businesses and capitalise on the strategic benefits as quickly as possible.”

Now WPP will set about integrating CIA into its buying operations and Chris Ingram (the man who put the CI in CIA) will have to get used to being an employee, although the £64 million he is said to have made from selling his share may soften the blow.

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