Market research firm Mori set for French takeover
Political pollster Mori looked set for French ownership today after shaking hands on a takeover valuing it at £88m (€127.6m).
Mori, which has 460 staff at offices including Edinburgh and Manchester, has been bought by Paris-based rival Ipsos in a deal that creates the third-largest market research group in the UK.
Executives of Mori will pick up around £5m (€7.2m) in shares following the takeover, which is expected to generate savings of £1.2m (€1.7m) each year.
Mori was founed by American-born Robert Worcester in 1969 and is best known for its political research assessing the voting intentions of Britons.
It carried out polls for newspapers such as the Financial Times, Observer and The Sun ahead of the General Election in May this year and accurately predicted a Labour victory.
Other recent research has covered issues such as the outlawing of hunting in the UK and the vulnerability of London to another terrorist attack after the July 7 bombs.
Mori generates 43% its revenues from its Social Research Institute, which provides information for local authorities and the Government.
The remainder of its turnover comes from its corporate and consumer work, specialist research such as evaluation of public relations teams and an in-house data collection agency.
Last year, Mori turned over £44.2m (€64m) and made operating profits of £5.6m (€8.1m) at a margin of 12.8%.
This continued its record of growth which has seen revenues increase at a compound annual rate of 13.2% over the past four years compared with a 4.7% expansion by the UK market research industry as a whole.
Based in London, Mori has offices in Belfast and Dublin as well as the sites in Manchester and Edinburgh.
Ipsos has its UK headquarters at Harrow and today’s deal is its third over the past 15 years, following the acquisitions of Research Services in 1991 and Research In Focus in 2000.
Brian Gosschalk, chief executive of Mori, said: “The private sector side of our business will benefit from Ipsos’ strong global network and the merged business will have a powerful public affairs and special research offering.”
Mr Gosschalk will head the combined group – called Ipsos Mori – and Worchester will take up the new role of chairman of the advisory board of Ipsos public affairs worldwide.
Today’s deal is being financed through equity and debt.
