User:Pederreid/Media Square

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Media Square plc is a small marketing services company which was floated on London’s AIM AIM stock exchange in August 2000, It started life as a cash shell hoping to develop digital marketing solutions service for clients.

With early acquisitions struggling, it purchased marketing services firm called Equanim in June 2002 in a bid to turn around the group’s fortunes. The move saw Equanim executive directors Jeremy Middleton and Graeme Burns join the Media Square board. By autumn, with the firm £2.5m in debt, all Media Square directors stepped down with the exception of Middleton and Burns, who set about developing a rescue strategy.

Their approach focused on the provision of marketing communications and retail marketing services, buying struggling businesses and restructuring them to make them profitable.

Within the space of seven months, this boosted revenues from £3 million to £7.6 million, contributing to a maiden full year profit of £255,692 for the year to 31 October 2003.

Buoyed by the turnaround, Media Square raised £10.6m of new equity funding by placing 59,000,000 new shares with institutional and other investors in May 2004.

A further round of equity fund raising in October 2004 added another £6.5 million, supporting the acquisition of Coutts Holdings plc [1], a fellow AIM-quoted retail marketing communications business. Shortly after, Media Square announced pre-tax profits of £1.5 million for the year to 31 October 2004.

In November 2005 Media Square acquired the “Marketing Services Group” from Huntsworth plc [2]for a total of £63 million plus associated costs. This was funded by new equity of £30 million and an acquisition finance facility of £38.75 million from HBOS. Kelvin Mackenzie Kelvin_Mackenzie was appointed as Chairman in January 2006.

The Group them encountered significant problems with the integration of all the new acquisitions and its share price dropped from a high of 30 pence to a low of 6 pence

In March 2007 Kelvin Mackenzie resigned as Chairman and in June 2007 Jeremy Middleton resigned. In July 2007 Roger Parry took over as Executive Chairman