Havas Raises Prospect Of Its Own Aegis Play, Some See A Breakup Scenario

In a strange new twist to the Aegis Group takeover saga, Paris-based Havas issued a cryptic statement early Wednesday morning that appeared to distance itself from the moves being made by Havas Chairman Vincent Bollore, a corporate raider who has been gobbling up Aegis shares and has emerged as the U.K.-based holding company's largest and most influential shareholder. At the same time, Havas' statement seemed to open up the possibility that the agency holding company, the parent of MPG and Arnold Worldwide, might consider its own Aegis play.

Noting that he was making the statement at the request of the U.K. Takeover Panel, Havas CEO Phillippe Wahl, said it was in response to recent comments made by Bollore as part of Groupe Bollore's results presentation on Sept. 30. "These statements were made by [Mr.] Bollore in his capacity as chief executive of Groupe Bollore in relation to its investments in Havas and Aegis respectively. Havas confirms that these statements were not made in [Mr.] Bollore's capacity as chairman of Havas," said Wahl, who was installed as CEO of Havas after Bollore seized control of Havas early this year and deposed former Havas chief Alain de Pouzilhac.

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"Such statements should not be taken as having any bearing on the question of whether or not Havas might participate at any time in any offer for Aegis in any capacity," the statement concluded, raising the first indication that Havas was at least thinking for doing so.

The Havas twist comes as interest in Aegis begins to peak with at least three major players - Bollore, French rival Publicis Groupe, and U.K. agency holding company WPP Group - have emerged as key players, and as others including U.S.-based Omnicom Group, and research companies such as France's Ipsos and the U.K.'s Taylor Nelson Sofres are said to be looming in the wings to make bids should the action heat up.

Speculation has even emerged that Bollore may align himself with WPP, which has aligned itself with U.S. private equity firm Hellman & Friedman, to effectively form a syndicate that would take over Aegis and break it up. In that scenario, the big question is who would get which assets.

WPP is said to be keen on Aegis' research operations, which would be a nice fit with WPP's burgeoning Kantar Media Research unit, but WPP would also likely want all or part of Aegis' media networks, which would bolster WPP's Group M division and which would indisputably make it the world's largest media buying organization.

That said, Havas is in desperate need to grow its agency network, especially in media services, as it has lost numerous accounts over the past year and increasingly is being seen as an also-ran to bigger players.

Another important part of the equation is the role of Procter & Gamble, one of Aegis' biggest clients, and now the flagship account of Aegis' flagship agency, Carat. Both Havas and WPP dearly want to become associated with the world's largest advertiser, which ironically seems to keep side-stepping Sorrell's WPP unit.

WPP last year acquired Grey Global Group, only after its MediaCom unit lost its portion of P&G's media account to Carat and Publicis' Starcom MediaVest Group, and on Tuesday P&G completed a restructuring of its agency account roster following its acquisition of Gillette, dropping WPP as one of its media agencies and consolidating the $800 million Gillette media account at Starcom MediaVest Group (see related story), and pulling it from WPP's MindShare unit.

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