Dentsu appoints bankers to seek buyers for international business

Dentsu has appointed two banks, Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley and Nomura Securities, to sound out potential buyers for its international creative and media business.

Initially reported by the Financial Times, Dentsu is exploring options ranging from a sale of a minority stake in the business to a full sale of its overseas operations.

Dentsu expanded its international business in 2012, acquiring Aegis and later dropping the name in 2020. It also includes US-based digital marketing consultancy Merkle.

Currently, no decision has been made formally but Dentsu wants to draw up a firm plan by the end of the year, according to the FT.

During a post-results Q&A with analysts earlier in August, chief executive Hiroshi Igarsashi did not rule out a sale when asked whether the company was open to "selling, merging international with another company".

He said, “We have been talking about the rebuilding of our international business. We have been working on enhancing our competitiveness. Well, for this, we are going to rebuild our business foundation. We are also going to re-evaluate our underperforming business, and we are making steady progress on this.”

He added: “In regard to divestiture of the international business, we are not at a stage of being able to give any clear response at this point in time, and I'm not in a state of being able to talk about anything specific right now.”

In 2023, Igarashi said a sale was “totally not part of my mindset” and “I’m not thinking about anything like that”, in an interview with Campaign.

However, Igarashi was not against a merger at the time. He said it was about pursuing “client-centricity”, but added: “Now, as a result of that if we become bigger or scaling alongside what we are working on, if [a deal] it comes along, that might be the case [that we would consider it].”

The latest moves follow the business reporting a 0.2% decline in organic revenue for H1 2025 and a lowering in its 2025 growth forecast from 1% to broadly flat.

Brian Wieser, principal at Madison and Wall, said: “Dentsu’s ownership of [the international] business was somewhat unusual because of the complete separation between it and the domestic business and Japan’s idiosyncratic isolation within the global agency industry.”

Wieser said it became clear that the “leadership team in Japan was not generally as plugged in to the rest of the industry” following global CEO Wendy Clark’s resignation in 2022, when Dentsu announced plans to integrate its businesses.

He pointed to Accenture Song, as well as “holding companies, large independents or private equity” as potential buyers, but dismissed IPG and Omnicom as they would be “focused” on their own merger.

Omnicom and IPG’s merger is set to conclude by the end of this year.

Dentsu declined to comment when approached by Campaign about the decision to appoint bankers.