• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, March 14, 2019

Well it looks like MDC Partners and Stagwell Group and have completed a deal, rumored earlier, for the latter to invest $100 million in the struggling agency holding company and with Stagwell founder Mark Penn to take the reins of MDC as CEO. 

The market seemed pleased with the development, sending MDC shares up more than 15% in after-market trading. 

MDC has been CEO-less since the end of 2018 when Scott Kauffman stepped down. Company shares took a beating earlier in the week when BMO downgraded the stock, citing big client losses. 

The company has been in play on and off for years and it had hoped to sell to a single buyer and drew interest from Accenture and others but a debt load of $1 billion-plus proved a deterrent to an outright sale. 

But Penn is a very capable executive who’s shown his prowess at building companies and operating within big corporate entities. His latest venture, Stagwell, is growing by leaps and bounds. He was a force at Microsoft and Burson-Marsteller. And he was a co-founder of political and business consultant Penn Schoen Berland whose clients included former U.S. President Bill Clinton and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. 

MDC has been off the rails since the disgraceful exit of founder Miles Nadal back in 2015. Penn may be just the antidote the company needs to get back on track.