GGT accepts pounds 143m bid from Omnicom

The board of GGT, the UK advertising agency which lost its main client Procter & Gamble only a week ago, yesterday accepted a bid of 200p a share from Omnicom, the world's second-largest advertising and marketing service group. The bid values GGT at pounds 143m.

GGT's New York agency, Wells BDDP, lost the P&G account last week, just a month after the departure of Paula Forman, chief operating officer of Wells BDDP, after a disagreement with the president Frank Assumma.

GGT paid pounds 96m for the BDDP business less than a year ago, and wrote off pounds 8m in reorganisation costs which wiped out the group profit in the year to 30 April. Losing the P&G account will knock pounds 80m off GGT's annual revenues and an estimated pounds 3m off its expected profit this year.

But GGT's misfortune was Omnicom's opportunity. Omnicom holds the account for P&G's main rival, Unilever, and would have had to sacrifice one or other of the accounts if it had acquired GGT before the P&G account was lost.

GGT shareholders will keep the 2.5p net dividend announced last week. The offer is 26.5p above the share price on Tuesday.