Holding Companies Fish In Microsoft’s Waters

August 6, 2009 By David Burn Leave a Comment

According to The Wall Street Journal, Microsoft is entertaining competing bids for Razorfish, the digital ad firm it acquired and now wants to offload.

Publicis bid between $500 million and $600 million for Razorfish, and Dentsu made a higher offer, according to people familiar with the bidding. A key negotiating point has been the buyer’s commitment to purchase hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising on Microsoft’s digital properties, an issue being hammered out this week between Publicis and Microsoft.
Publicis, which owns agencies such as Leo Burnett and Saatchi & Saatchi, has said it wants digital advertising to account for 25% of its revenue by 2010, compared with 20.8% currently.

In related news, Razorfish are found in sandy beds and seagrass areas. They have squarish heads and they may bite. Razorfish are carnivorous and omnivorous, feeding on a mix of mollusks, brittle stars and crustaceans in the wild.
This is what they look like:

Filed Under: Agencies, Holding Companies

About David Burn

I wrote my first ad for a local political candidate when I was 17. She went on to win her race, and I felt the power of persuasive copy for the first time. Starting in Portland in 1995, I worked my way across the country as a copywriter and eventually became a content director making media products for big packaged goods brands. I returned to Oregon in 2008, and now I focus on building brands for companies that matter, including this one.