LONDON — The long-running M&A saga between marketing services agency groups M&C Saatchi and Next 15 is over, as M&C Saatchi shareholders voted overwhelmingly against Next 15’s offer this week.

Next 15 – which bought Engine Group, including PR agency MHP Mischief, in March this year – originally made its $381 million offer to buy M&C Saatchi in May this year, and was for some months in a bidding war with M&C Saatchi’s top shareholder, Vin Murria, and her business Advanced AdvT, who together hold 22.3% of the share capital and were also seeking to take over the company.

Murria withdrew her offer in October and was among those to oppose the Next 15 deal. In total, 89% of investors opposed the sale to Next 15, with only 11% in favour, after M&C Saatchi's board said it was unable to recommend the deal.

In a statement, M&C Saatchi – which runs PR agencies M&C Saatchi Talk and M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment – said the Next 15 offer has now lapsed and it is no longer in an offer period, and now intends to remain as an independent business: “The M&C Saatchi directors believe in the strong, standalone future prospects of M&C Saatchi.

“Following the lapse of both the Next 15 offer and the ADV offer, the M&C Saatchi directors look forward to continuing the implementation of M&C Saatchi’s strategy as an independent business including to: invest in high margin businesses, enhance margins, further simplify the group, implement technology platforms, and scale data and analytics capabilities, and reduce costs.”

In September, Next 15 said in announcing its interim results that it was ‘confident’ about the acquisition, but in response to the shareholder vote, the group said in its statement that the outcome had been expected after Murria and Advanced AdvT announced earlier in October that they intended to vote against the deal.

The statement said “Next 15 will always maintain pricing discipline when pursuing its M&A strategy, which may result in certain transactions not proceeding. The board remains highly confident in the Next 15 Group’s future prospects.”