• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, October 14, 2005

A day after the board of directors of Aegis Group convened, no material offer has been made to acquire the U.K.-based media services and marketing research holding company, but its top investor--French corporate raider and Havas Chairman Vincent Bollore--continued to boost his stake, and the European financial press was rife with renewed speculation of who might and might not be interested in acquiring Aegis in earnest.

Amid the speculation is the notion that no imminent deal may be afoot, and that Aegis may continue to operate independently as the world's largest pure play media agency, but with a far more aggressive mix of influential shareholders than it has operated with in the past. The most influential of those no doubt will be Bollore, who Friday morning upped his stake in Aegis by 4.9 million shares, and now controls 15.43 percent of the company.

At this rate, the Aegis play looks more like the creeping takeover of Havas that Bollore successfully completed early this year, which led to a restructuring of Havas' management team, and gave Bollore control of the Paris-based agency holding company, the parent of MPG.

No one is speculating on that at the moment--as a number of prospective bidders remain on the sidelines, poised to make an explicit offer to acquire Aegis, although it's unclear that any are willing to make an offer greater than its recent share price trading range, which is up about 40 percent since Bollore began buying up Aegis shares.

Meanwhile, French dailies have published stories suggesting that the Aegis board now is resolved to selling the company rather than remaining independent. Citing unnamed sources, Los Echos reported: "Aegis's board and several shareholders would be in favor of a firm offer rather than maintaining the group's independence at any price."

La Tribune, meanwhile, reported that Publicis Groupe will likely decide within the next several days whether to make a firm offer to acquire Aegis, and that CEO Maurice Levy may be considering withdrawing Publicis' 140 pence-per-share bid. Publicis is known to have lined up sufficient financing to acquire Aegis, but may have been stymied by Bollore's share build-up. Publicis is known to be a prudent investor, and to avoid getting into bidding wars.

Another factor in the Publicis scenario is the role of Dentsu, the powerful Japanese agency holding company that owns 15 percent of Publicis, and which itself had been eyeing Aegis before the action heated up. Dentsu obtained that stake when it aided Publicis in its acquisition of Bcom3 several years ago.

The U.K.'s Telegraph, meanwhile, reported that WPP Group CEO Martin Sorrell confirmed that he is still mulling an explicit bid to acquire Aegis, with backing from U.S. equity firm Hellmann and Friedman. Sorrell indicated his main interest in Aegis would be its research operations--Synovate--which are considered prized assets in the research community. Ironically, WPP's Kantar Media Research unit has been a fierce competitor with Synovate.

The only major logical player to be silent in the process has been U.S.-based Omnicom, which interestingly has the smallest share of global media services revenues of the major holding companies, trailing both WPP and Publicis. Should Aegis become acquired by either WPP or Publicis, it might signal that Omnicom is not nearly as serious about dominating the media services field.