• by Larissa Faw , January 7, 2016

While competitors Publicis and Omnicom continue to acquire agencies that specialize in advertising technology and programmatic buying, MDC Partners is moving in another direction, said David Doft during the Citi 2016 Internet, Media, and Telecommunications Conference in Las Vegas, NV.  

Company CEO Scott Kauffman believes "we should be the renters of technology," says Doft. "Our strategy is on the front end with the creative and on the back end where we analyze the results. So we want to be on the front and back and rent the middle."  

MDC Partners is saving money thanks to its leadership change.

"The biggest difference is in compensation," says Doft. New CEO Kauffman will earn $1.1 million this year, while former CEO Miles Nadal was set to take home $16.8 million. Nadal departed last July, after it was discovered that he charged the company approximately $10 million for bogus expenses over a period of several years.

An SEC investigation probing the company’s accounting practices and trading activities is still ongoing. 

In another money saving move, the company closed down its Toronto headquarters, where Nadal was based part of the time when he was CEO. MDC also stopped trading its shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange with Doft noting that less than 1% of its trading volume came from this exchange.

He says there were too many "hard and soft costs" associated with this listing to justify the expense.  

At the same time, MDC is accelerating its investment in technology to enable the company to share information across the entire enterprise. M&A remains a key focus, and while the firm hasn’t slowed down its acquisition efforts, there haven't been as many attractive opportunities of late where the company has been able to come to agreements as in prior years, says Doft.  

Doft provided no timetable or update on the SEC investigation that began in October of 2014. "Unfortunately, they don't really tell you," says Doft. "But at the end of the day, they will do whatever work they need to do and we don't really know."

He adds, "The next 18 months are a really interesting period for us." He believes that within this time frame the SEC will finally give some "indication" about its plans because "the uncertainty is not helpful and leads to investors to stay away."