Havas has been given the opportunity to become an integrated media and advertising giant. Vivendi has made an offer to buy the 60% (€2.36 bn or AU$3.5 bn) stake in the company owned by Havas chairman, Vincent Bolloré.

Vincent Bollore heads Groupe Bolloré and is also the chairman of Vivendi and a shareholder in that company as well as Havas. The Bolloré Group has a stake of 30% in Vivendi, which is a major player in content, media and communications with assets including Universal Music Group, Canal +, DailyMotion, Gameloft and a stake in Telecom Italia.

Vincent Bollore

Groupe Bolloré has responded with a statement that following a review of the offer by the board of directors, “Given the financial terms, the strategic rationale and the development prospects implied by Vivendi`s indicative offer for the 20,000 employees of Havas, the Boards of Groupe Bolloré have welcomed it and have decided to enter into discussions with Vivendi.”

Yannick Bolloré, chairman and chief executive officer of Havas and Vincent Bolloré’s son, wrote in his internal email regarding the bid, “Many of you have often mentioned how this convergence would be attractive for our talents. Our groups evolve in the same environment, some of our teams already collaborate and our cultures are similar and complementary.

Yannick Bollore

“Finally, our clients expect us to come up with innovative solutions and having privileged access to Vivendi’s prestigious assets would enable us to create unique offerings and services all over the world. We have already launched shared initiatives which this operation would accelerate.”

He noted that Vivendi would gain Havas’ expertise in consumer science, content creation and production and data.

Without Vivendi, Havas remains small compared to the largest agency holding companies. Its 2016 global revenue of AU$3.4 billion makes it 1/8 the size of WPP (AU$26.2bn) and  less than 1/3 the size of Interpublic (AU$10.6bn).