By Robert Heeg, RW Journalist
Ipsos’ acquisition of four major GfK divisions made market research headlines last summer. Ipsos founder Didier Truchot explains how the move fits into his company’s plans to grow as a global insights leader.
In a deal worth €105 million Ipsos acquired four global divisions of GfK’s custom research business this year: Customer Experience, Experience Innovation, Health and Public Affairs. As a consequence, almost 1000 GfK professionals will join Ipsos in 25 countries, including major markets such as China, Germany, UK and USA. The acquired businesses will have an estimated revenue of over €200 million in 2018, with EMEA contributing to around 55% of the revenues and the Americas to 39%.
We asked Didier Truchot, Ipsos’ founder, chairman and CEO, about the prime reasons behind this acquisition.
“They fit well within our organisation. We are currently developing a project called Total Understanding, which is about deploying capabilities and services all over the world for the benefit of our local and glocal clients. This deal is for us a way to reinforce our position in certain services. We believe that this deal will make us stronger in these four areas, bringing us more resources, clients and revenue. For us it’s an interesting tactical opportunity. We think for Ipsos to be larger, with more people, more talent, is a good move. It’s that simple.”
How quickly do you think Ipsos can integrate the almost 1000 GfK professionals in 25 countries?
Ipsos is a company with nearly 17.000 employees. Welcoming another 1000 is of course a project in itself, but it is not as huge a challenge as when we had 10.000 employees and added 6000 Synovate people when we took over that company (in 2011, ed.). That was a much larger and more complicated project. Take for example the UK, where we will now add 100 employees to the 1300 we already have. I’m not saying that it’s not significant but it certainly won’t destabilise our company.
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