Aegis Group acquired digital agency Roundarch for $125 million, the company announced today. Aegis is merging the Chicago-based firm with the U.S. arm of its Isobar agency network to form RoundarchIsobar.
Jeff Maling, Roundarch’s president and chief experience officer, and Geoff Cubit, its president and chief technology officer, will jointly head RoundarchIsobar. Darryl Gehly will continue to serve as president of Isobar U.S. and will report to Maling and Cubit.
“We’re really happy with Isobar in terms of the actual product it was delivering, but what we felt was we wanted a lot more scale,” said. As a result of the acquisition, digital will account for 57 percent of Aegis Media’s U.S. revenue, he said.
The combined agency will house roughly 450 employees—with 250 coming from Roundarch—across offices in Boston, Chicago, Denver, New York and San Francisco. Roundarch and Isobar will likely combine their Boston offices, Morris said, as Isobar has been planning to move to a new space. The Boston office will be RoundarchIsobar’s largest.
Roundarch’s clients include Avis, HBO, Bloomberg Sports, Motorola and the U.S. Air Force.
The acquisition and resulting merger cap an eventful 12 months for Aegis’ domestic business. After tapping Gehly to head Isobar U.S. in March, Aegis expanded Morris’ responsibilities in June to include South America in addition to his North American duties. That change came amid a wider consolidation of the company’s global reporting structure.
