It’s no secret that private equity-driven M&A in 2025 is forecasted to be way up. It’s also no secret that most deals – upwards of 80% based on studies by McKinsey, PwC, HBR, and others – fail to fully create the intended business value.

While many factors remain the same, the landscape has changed, raising the bar for post-deal success. Mergers are complex, with multiple companies and cultures coming together. Ownership changes, while simpler, are still far from easy.

Last year, speculation was that Interpublic's R/GA would be sold to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)—a clear merger situation. In stark contrast, the current R/GA PE-backed, take-private speculation falls into the latter category—a change of ownership.

Based on my experience having sold a brand firm into a PE-backed roll-up with 10+ agencies – from insights to digital to media/marketing, and including an Indian-based back-end tech business – I see three areas where a merger versus a change of ownership could have drastically different implications for the future of R/GA.

Cultural Alignment. 

Cultural alignment is often identified as the key foundational element determining post-M&A integration success. How aligned is leadership on a future vision, and what does the roadmap look like to get there? I would bet a hypothetical acquisition by the likes of TCS would be very messy. R/GA would struggle to maintain its DNA – a hyper-focus on creativity – in the context of a more practical, tech and efficiency-driven TCS culture.

The current take-private scenario, on the other hand, would likely decrease the potential for significant culture clashes. While management and PE owners would still require alignment, given the more focused business, there would simply be far less complexity.

Go-To-Market Complexity. 

This is an area of merger integration that is often under-estimated pre-merger. On the face of it, adjacent businesses seem to make sense, benefiting clients by increasing synergies and agencies by increasing their share of wallet.

But how would R/GA’s value proposition jive with that of TCS? And how would their creative and digital marketing services fit into a service architecture that includes  AI, cloud, cognitive business operations, yes, that’s its name, and network solutions/services?

My guess is not good. For R/GA, a merger would likely result in an unfocused, complicated, and overly muddy proposition. While the take-private scenario would simply retain the same considerations that R/GA faces today as a stand-alone agency brand. Yet with an opportunity to renew focus with new energy, enabling the agency to do what it does best.

Client Experience & Agency Workflow. 

This is where the rubber hits the road. Taking a client-centric view of the world, typically, go-to-market-first and tech-first clients have their own set responsibilities, objectives, and budgets. While, in theory, people talk about holistic solutions, the reality is that most organizations still operate in silos.

When mergers are driven by service adjacency, agency leads are likely to be given new KPIs to cross-sell and promote unfamiliar services. This can make them appear uneducated to knowledgeable clients, alienating their core clients by seeming too sales-focused, or worse yet, both.

In contrast, the take-private scenario likely circumvents the potential complexities of a merger, improving client experiences and ensuring agency efficiency and effectiveness.

For R/GA’s sake, I hope their future is privatization backed by PE.

Editors Note: R/GA announced on March 3 a deal with TrueLink Capital to be taken private.