Hasta La Creative!

There are unusually high levels of mergers and acquisitions in the agency world right now, but that doesn’t mean small shops can just breeze into the right kind of sale, panelists said at the Ad Age Small Agency Conference on Thursday in Boston.

Potential buyers aren’t the problem. “New buyers coupled with new capabilities and demand is driving a lot of new activity in the market and I really don’t see it stopping any time soon,” said Maurice Watkins, partner at Results International, an investment bank focused on agencies and marketing tech companies. The big agency holding companies are only doing about 15% of the global deals right now, he said, with IT companies, international buyers, media companies and private equity driving many of the other deals.

The questions are which agencies are wanted, ready to sell and prepared to navigate the process. Size does matter, even within the “small agency” crowd, Mr. Watkins said. “It’s very difficult to in any market to find a buyer for the 10-person agency,” he said. Fifty people, however, draws a certain kind of buyer. If you get to 100 people, that’s a different kind.

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