While Omnicom and IPG continue to wend their way through the approval process of their proposed combination, reports from the UK indicate that WPP and Accenture may have had discussions in the spring about a possible merger of their own. 

Since that time, there have been significant changes at both companies including leadership transitions at both WPP and Accenture Song, Accenture’s big creative marketing division.  

There’s been speculation about WPP being sold on and off for years, speculation that picked up steam late last year when the Omnicom-IPG was announced and the industry pondered who might be next.  

Earlier there was speculation that Publicis was preparing to buy Havas, which turned out not to be the case. More recently when Havas split from Vivendi late last year speculation was that the company was setting itself up for a merger deal, which company officials denied.  

Madison And Wall analyst Brian Wieser doesn’t believe Accenture is about to do a deal the size of the WPP, although it could and may do so in the future.  

“There always seemed to be a high likelihood of a growing intersection between media, marketing services and marketing IT as epitomized by Publicis’ purchase of Sapient, WPP’s early investment in Globant and numerous smaller scale transactions and internal growth opportunities developed by the holdcos over the years,” Wieser stated in a client note today. 

"With the capacity to do something big in this space, Accenture always appeared to have opportunities to pursue large-scale acquisitions but instead chose to prioritize smaller-scale acquisitions and organic expansion," he said.

And, added Wieser, “We wouldn’t bet on anything happening any time soon given the missed opportunities of the past and the murky opportunities for the sector in the near-term. On the other hand, Accenture continues to employ many individuals at senior levels with deep agency experience, and most of them would presumably have a clear view about the meaningful opportunities that could follow from an eventual acquisition and integration of a large-scale business in this space. So while it doesn’t appear that anything is looming for the present time, we wouldn’t rule out the potential for a scaled inorganic expansion of agency services at Accenture at some point in the future.”