Moelis的Geoffrey奥斯汀在他的帽子下保持广告Megadeal

今年7月，当美国营销服务巨头宏盟集团(Omnicom Group)和法国竞争对手阳狮集团(Publicis Groupe)宣布了史上规模最大的广告合并时，两家公司进行了铺天盖地的宣传。在可以俯瞰凯旋门的阳狮巴黎总部屋顶举行的新闻发布会上，两家公司的首席执行官——宏盟集团(Omnicom)的雷恩(John Wren)和阳狮集团的莫里斯·Lévy——就这笔173亿美元的交易握手。

但交易留在公众眼中，直到该活动，与伦敦精品投资银行Moelis＆Co.Moelis＆Co.的董事会办事处的常务董事，Randall Weisenburger，纽约州的竞技州首席财务官 -基于Omnicom，称他的旧联系Austin与提案：Omnicom希望评估与Proteicis的合并，Weisenburger需要完全自由裁量权。

结构化为全股交易，这笔交易对任一公司的股票价格中的任何运动都很敏感。“秘密是绝对必要的，我们是一段时间唯一工作的顾问，”奥斯汀，48。“即使圈子大幅扩大，我们也设法全部保密，这是一笔交易的成就这个尺寸。“

即将进行的合并有助于提高莫里斯的形象。根据Dealogic的数据，今年截至9月底，这家总部位于纽约的银行以1,006亿美元的并购交易规模在全球排名第12位。这比2012年的624亿美元增长了61%。

Omnicom-Publicis was also a personal triumph for media expert Austin, who has always worked in London and first met Weisenburger while advising U.K. advertising agency Abbott Mead Vickers on its £346 million ($571 million) sale to Omnicom in 1998. At the time, Austin was an M&A banker at former U.K. merchant bank Hambros, where he spent a decade after earning a chemistry degree from the University of Oxford and completing the London Business School’s corporate finance program. (Paris-based Société Générale bought Hambros in 1998.) “My specialism in media happened by accident,” Austin recalls. “Hambros had a number of clients in the sector, and its ethos of independent advice enabled me to start building relationships that still endure, such as Omnicom.”

2001年，奥斯汀搬到了德意志银行作为媒体部门的贸易专家。There his many transactions included advising the private equity consortium that bought Dutch publisher Verenigde Nederlandse Uitgeverijen (now Nielsen Holdings) for $11 billion in 2006 and London-based market research firm Taylor Nelson Sofres on its $1.95 billion acquisition by U.K. advertising and public relations giant WPP Group in 2008. Austin rose to become global head of media at Deutsche before Moelis recruited him in 2010.

Moelis was founded in 2007 by Kenneth Moelis, former head of UBS’s U.S. investment banking business, who saw an opportunity to launch an independent firm focused on advice after the credit bubble burst, undermining the advantage held by integrated banks that had used their balance sheets to offer M&A financing. “I’ve returned to my roots, although Moelis has a global scale that Hambros and other U.K. merchant banks never had,” Austin says of his firm, whose operations in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the U.S. give it an international presence that is essential as the M&A market becomes more cross-border. “It’s not the case that independent advisers are creating a new advisory landscape, but more a return to where banking used to be before the credit boom, when the market was divided between advisory-led banks on the one hand and financing banks on the other.”

奥姆尼康和阳狮的合并计划将于2014年第一季度获得监管机构和股东的批准。合并后的公司规模将达到350亿美元，是全球最大的广告巨头。罗斯柴尔德代表阳狮集团;因为不需要融资，双方都不需要大型投资银行的服务，与精品公司合作有助于确保保密。在新成立的阳狮宏盟集团(Publicis Omnicom Group)的头30个月里，Lévy和任睿兰将担任联席首席执行官，之后阳狮将担任唯一首席执行官，任睿兰将担任非执行董事长。

这样的交易需要几个月的准备，奥斯汀花了几个星期往返于纽约和伦敦之间。下班后，他保持低调，把尽可能多的时间花在妻子和两个孩子身上。他还担任奥里尔协会(Oriel Society)主席，该协会是他在牛津大学(Oxford)就读的学院的校友组织，并为全国防止虐待儿童协会(National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children)筹款。

Omnicom-PromotiS表示欧洲的并购市场在长期不适后开始反弹。随着欧元区危机显然通过债务和股票市场以有利的价格提供控制和融资，恒星现在对潜在的交易蓬勃发展。“并购银行家一直在说，多年来，”奥斯汀票据。“缺乏的是信心，但现在正在回来。”•