The two leading shareholder advisory firms have endorsed the planned acquisition of Interpublic by Omnicom. The firms are Glass Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Investors.  

Word of the endorsements comes about two weeks before the shareholders of both companies are scheduled to vote on the merger in separate meetings on March 18. 

The endorsements don’t guarantee approval but both advisory firms are known to be influential with their investors clients. 

Omnicom Chief Financial Officer Phil Angelastro confirmed the development at an investor gathering hosted by Morgan Stanley earlier this week. 

Omnicom filed a transcript of Angelastro’s remarks with the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

According to the filing Morgan Stanley analyst Cameron McVeigh asked Angelastro for any updates on the merger. 

Omnicom’s financial chief responded by confirming the endorsements by the two firms. 

“We’re pretty pleased about that,” he said. Noting the upcoming shareholder meetings on the 18th, Angelastro added, “so certainly we think that will be helpful on that process. Yeah, we did get a little lucky in terms of being able to schedule that vote about as early as we possibly could, the proxy review process was very short, and therefore we can get the shareholder vote behind us, so we’re optimistic about that.” 

Assuming both groups of shareholders approve the deal, the firm still has work to do getting antitrust regulatory approval in the U.S. and in multiple countries around the world.