WPP Buying Binge Continues

WPP continued its week-long buying binge today, confirming Wunderman’s acquisition of an e-commerce data company, FusePump, based in the UK and Hill+Knowlton’s intent to purchase digital creative agency Rice5, based in China. Terms were not disclosed.

With the latest two deals, WPP has racked up six M&A transactions in the last week.

For Wunderman, FusePump, was the second purchase in the past week. On March 24 (with sibling unit WPP Digital) Wunderman acquired a majority stake in Cognifide, which specializes in content management and digital asset management technology.

According to WPP, London-based FusePump extracts product data from e-commerce Web sites and other data sources, making it available for integration into hundreds of marketing channels and advertising applications. Clients include Nokia, Sky, Sony, Tesco. FusePump had about $5 million in revenue in 2013, per the holding company.

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Rice5, the proposed H+K acquisition, has offices in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Clients include Givenchy, L'Oreal Group, LEE Jeans, Maxim's Group, Rayban and The Hong Kong Tourism Board. The shop had revenues of a little over $2 million last year, per WPP.

Last week, JWT bought two agencies including China’s eGift and a majority stake in India’s Social Wavelength.

Also last week, WPP agreed to buy Shanghai-based XMKT Group, which has four main divisions: Events, Retail, Entertainment and Digital.

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