Two consultants with 45 years of advertising experience between them are launching a company to broker mergers and acquisitions of agencies with less than $500 million in billings.
Roth Acadia—a joint venture of Richard Roth and Matt Ryan—opens this week with three clients—two buyers and one seller.
While he did not identify them, Ryan described one buyer as a shop outside New York with billings of $200 million, and the other as a public company that needs below-the-line marketing services. He declined to discuss the seller.
Ryan, the former CEO of Ryan Drossman & Partners (now MARC USA), will manage the day-to-day operations of Roth Acadia, while Roth, president of New York search consultancy Roth Associates, will offer strategic advice.
Roth has a 52 percent stake in the company; Ryan owns 48 percent.
The mission will be to “put to gether strategically cor rect marriages,” said Roth, who before becoming a search consultant was director of account and marketing services at the former Scali Mc Cabe Sloves. “We know more about making the thing work. It’s not just about the money.”
Ryan, who recently started a consultancy that develops business plans (Acadia Consulting Group in Armonk, N.Y.), said, “We’re going to do qualitative due diligence.”
The venture will use support staff from both Acadia Consulting and Roth Associates, which Roth continues to steer. Roth Acadia also has forged an alliance with a New York investment bank, Morgan Lewis Githers & Ahn.
Roth, Ryan Team Up
