Mike Fell and Philip Duquenoy (KPC), Mike Colling and Steve Booth (MC&C)
Private equity house Key Capital Partners (KCP) has invested £6.6 million to take a significant minority stake in independent performance media agency MC&C, enabling the formation of a new MC&C Group comprising MC&C London, MC&C Muse and the newly-formed MC&C International.
Key Capital Partners’ partner Mike Fell joins a new group executive board as a non-executive director, alongside MC&C founder Mike Colling, executive chairman Steve Booth, UK managing director Mark Jackson and deputy managing director Robin Trust.
The growth capital will be used to grow the team, invest further in operational technology and potential acquisitions and accelerate international growth.
Further to the appointment of chief strategy officer Toby Strangewood and chief digital officer Richard Stanton in July, the group has created two additional strategic roles under a new operational structure, with a head of social and international managing director set to be announced in coming months.
The four join a newly-expanded management team, all of whom become equity partners in MC&C Group, under the leadership of Jackson and Trust.
“The time is right for a new model of media agency: a fully-accountable, independent-minded, performance-led global network built on the principle that every penny of media spend should deliver business growth,” said Colling.
“Effective growth marketing requires transparency, professionalism and accountability. Having proven the model, and the demand for our way of working, we’re ready to scale and want to become world leaders in performance. Our partnership with Key Capital Partners give us the growth capital we need to deliver on this vision.”
KPC’s Fell added: “MC&C have a unique approach to media investment management that we believe can drive growth for any business. This expertise simply doesn’t exist in the independent sector and we see huge potential for future growth.
“The management team has built a scalable model and an impressive leadership team and we look forward to supporting them on their next phase of growth.”
