NEWS: GGT enters PR with purchase of FD parent BDDP

BDDP, France’s third-biggest advertising agency and parent company to PR

firms Financial Dynamics and Lynne Franks, has been sold to UK ad agency

GGT (formerly Gold Greenlees Trott) for pounds 105 million.

The deal ends months of speculation about the future of the company

after a group of investors led by Walter Butler, who bought the loss-

making agency in 1993, started looking for a buyer earlier this year.

BDDP’s revenues for 1995 were approximately pounds 143 million, of which

22 per cent was generated from corporate communications. This includes

FD, Lynne Franks and Paris-based communications agency Compagnie

Corporate.

A middle ranking advertising agency, GGT has no existing PR operations,

although it has ambitions to develop into a marketing services group.

Lawrence Dore, account manager at Citigate Corporate, which is handling

PR for GGT, said the company saw itself as ‘a holding company for

brands’ - of which FD is one. He added: ‘the UK is some way ahead of

Europe in this area, they view it [PR] as an exportable skill’.

The new deal between FD and its parent, (PR Week, 20 September),

guarantees the firm operational independence. Michael Greenlees,

chairman and chief executive of GGT described FD as a ‘premier brand

with an outstanding reputation in their market place’ and he said ‘they

can be assured of a strong and important future within GGT’.