Mark Penn, the American founder of Stagwell, made a merger offer to Sir Martin Sorrell’s company last year. The proposal for S4 Capital, his former boss’s marketing group, was not made public and only revealed last month.
The first approach was rebuffed and Penn is understood to have made a series of sequentially lower offers for his British rival, the last worth about $700 million, as the UK-listed S4’s share price fell. S4’s stock is down by about 55 per cent since this time last year and the business has a market value of about £365 million.
Sorrell has described the offers as not credible but those familiar with the matter…
