Publicis Groupe acquires Razorfish from Microsoft

BEIJING, Aug. 10 (Xinhuanet) -- French advertising company Publicis Groupe struck a deal Sunday to buy the digital marketing agency Razorfish from Microsoft in order to boost its share of advertising on the Web, according to a joint statement released Sunday.

The deal is valued at 530 million U.S. dollars, comprised of cash and 6.5 million Publicis Groupe treasury shares. The two companies also signed a five-year strategic alliance agreement that will allow Publicis to purchase display and search advertising from Microsoft on favorable terms, in exchange for guaranteed aggregate purchase levels.

"We look forward to continuing to work with Razorfish as one of our agencies, and we're confident that as a part of Publicis Groupe, Razorfish will build on its success to date in the digital advertising industry," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, in a joint statement from the two companies.

Microsoft acquired Razorfish in 2007 when it bought aQuantive, a digital marketing services company, for about 6 billion U.S. dollars in order to compete better with Google.

"The acquisition of Razorfish is another step forward in realizing our strategic vision of building a world leader in digital communications, a critically important space for our clients," said Publicis CEO Maurice Levy, in the joint company statement.

Razorfish will continue to operate under its brand name and will function as part of VivaKi, the unit created in June to seek synergies among various Publicis units including Digitas, Starcom MediaVest Group, Denuo, and ZenithOptimedia.