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Building a global digital marketing services platform for the modern-era, focused on technology, data and content

We advised MediaMonks, the pre-eminent global creative production company, on their merger with S4 Capital.

Primary Sector:
  • Digital Media and Content

Sector Context

Digitization has fundamentally altered the customer to business ecosystem. Customers are increasingly found online and with a growing number of digital touch-points, businesses are now required to adapt and interact with their customers on a personalized basis. These structural shifts are driving a change in the input required from agency partners with strong demand for integrated end-to-end solutions across the whole value chain, combining creativity, tech and data.

The digital customer experience market is substantial (>€300bn) and growing at a healthy high single digit annual growth rate. The supplier landscape is broad, fragmented and varied. There is an increasing focus on how to successfully combine digital capabilities, with M&A being widely used to supplement skill-sets.

Our Role

Having built a close relationship with the founders in their formative years, we successfully represented MediaMonks the first time in 2015, when Dutch mid-market fund Bencis invested behind their global expansion strategy.

Three years on, triggered by an offer from a global technology player, shareholders decided to pursue a sale. Our reputation, expertise and intimate knowledge of the buyer universe meant that we were the clear and obvious choice to be their trusted advisor again. No other M&A advisor is as active as JEGI CLARITY in the marketing services sector and our track record and experience meant we knew which select parties to engage with, as well as how to tailor the story for them.

The deal is widely acknowledged as delivering benchmark pricing and deal structure in the marketing services sector, having nearly doubled the initial attractive valuation proposed at the outset.

Transaction Detail

MediaMonks is the leading global digital creative production platform, working directly with the world’s largest brands such as adidas, Amazon, General Electric, Google and Netflix.  Headquartered in Amsterdam, the company employs over 750 ‘Monks’ from 11 offices around the world and is the industry’s most recognized and awarded production company, having won 128 Cannes Lions to date.

MediaMonks partners with its clients to turn ideas, strategy and IP into inspiring campaigns, products and experiences, creating dynamic data-driven content and building platforms using best of breed UX and digital design. They are globally renowned for their high caliber design and production work at the cutting edge of the next wave of technologies driving digital content.

This highly strategic transaction represents the cornerstone investment in what is an ambitious plan laid out by Sir Martin Sorrell to transform the marketing services landscape, through S4 Capital. It brings together two of the industry’s most well-respected names to create one of the most forward thinking and fastest growing operators in the sector.

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Our Transactions

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