It is thought at least one senior representative from each company has taken part in talks.
Campaign Germany and Campaign UK first heard about high-level contact between Accenture and WPP at the start of May. (Campaign is PRWeek's sister business media brand at Haymarket Media).
The exact nature of any potential M&A deal and the timing of the discussions are not known.
Multiple sources have suggested that Julie Sweet, chair and chief executive of Accenture, was involved in one meeting.
Accenture said it had no comment, and WPP also said it had no comment when Campaign asked each of the companies whether a senior representative from Accenture has met a senior representative from WPP since the start of 2025 to discuss a potential deal or partnership involving the two companies.
One industry source played down the significance of any contact.
“Companies talk to each other all the time about hypothetical tie-ups, and most of these conversations are fleeting one-offs that never amount to anything,” this person said. Another industry source suggested the M&A conversations have not progressed.
Accenture, a U.S.-listed consulting giant, has been expanding in agency services through its Accenture Song division; it is valued at $175 billion (£130 billion). It could afford to acquire some or all of U.K.-based WPP, one of the world’s largest agency groups, which is worth about £4.5 billion ($6.1 billion).
Both companies are in the middle of leadership changes. WPP last week named Cindy Rose, a Microsoft executive and existing WPP non-executive director, as its new CEO, taking over in September from Mark Read, whose departure was announced on June 9.
David Droga, the global CEO of Accenture Song, is also planning to step down and become vice chair of Accenture, and Ndidi Oteh, Americas lead for Accenture Song, will succeed him in September, the company announced on May 28.
Media-buying is a key battleground
Brian Wieser, a long-time industry analyst and founder of Madison & Wall, a research firm, told Campaign it “absolutely made sense” if Accenture and WPP wanted to “explore” a potential deal or transaction.
Wieser, who worked at WPP from 2019 until 2023, said Accenture Song lacks scale in media-buying, which has become increasingly important in agency services, and WPP owns WPP Media, the world’s biggest media-buying group, formerly known as Group M.
Accenture has always maintained it does not need to be involved in traditional media planning and buying, but Sweet told investors in March that it was ramping up its media operation.
Meanwhile, WPP faces being overtaken in global media billings by Omnicom Group, which is due to complete the takeover of Interpublic Group later this year, and it has also been losing business, notably to Publicis Groupe.
WPP has warned of worsening revenues, most recently on July 9, when it issued a shock profit warning, and its share price has halved since January.
“WPP has been a takeover target for a while,” Wieser said. “A break-up has always been an option [too],” he added, if that appealed to an acquirer and delivered value for WPP’s own shareholders.
“There was always industrial logic for Accenture to have the capabilities that WPP has. But it also made sense that Accenture didn’t need all of those capabilities — nobody, not even WPP, needs three global creative networks,” Wieser said.
Droga recently criticized what he called the “broken” business models of holding companies at Cannes Lions in June. Accenture Song has “no interest” in what he described as “the old media game," he said at a press briefing. “That model is going to break. And if we can’t help or be one of the architects that creates a new model, then the platforms will do it without us.”
Wieser said Accenture’s longstanding insistence that it did not want to get involved in media was sincere but he went on, “It’s hard to imagine they didn’t have some doubts around their strategy which avoided owning a traditional media agency. Media has been the most durable and fast-growing and resilient part of the [agency] business and it’s adapted to AI already. When you look at Accenture today, you can see holes and one of those holes is a media agency.”
Separately, analysts at JP Morgan Cazenove published a note last week about Cindy Rose’s “strategic options” in which they said WPP’s “earlier-than-expected” appointment of a CEO “potentially makes WPP less vulnerable to a bid."
A sale of assets is hypothetically an option, and WPP Media “could be of particular interest to consultancies," but “WPP is unlikely to sell it, as it is key to its integrated offering," the investment bank said.
This story first appeared on Campaign UK.
Source: prweek.com