Flamingo International and FD Solutions
Smoothing the process of acquisition – before, during and after.

Flamingo International is a qualitative market research agency which delivers insight and advice to many of the world’s leading brands. The company was founded in West London in 1992 and has shown impressive growth in every subsequent year. Offices were established in San Francisco and Singapore in 2001 and 2003 respectively. In the year to 30 April 2006 the Flamingo group recorded sales in excess of £13 million.

Flamingo approached FD Solutions in late 2005. The company, which was still owned entirely by its management team, had no in-house financial management and relied on its auditor for financial information.  Though the owners had an excellent intuitive grip on their business, they felt that because of the increasing size and complexity of the organisation they needed closer financial support. Richard Simpson of FD Solutions was appointed part-time Finance Director of Flamingo in December 2005.

Richard’s first step as FD was to bolster the finance department by adding a part-time management accountant. Accounting was brought in-house at Flamingo’s next financial year end, regular monthly management reports were issued and project profitability was monitored, giving confidence that the estimates used for customer pricing were accurate.

About the same time that Richard was appointed FD, Flamingo received an approach from a potential acquirer and engaged Results International, a specialist M&A adviser to the Marketing and Communications sectors to review Flamingo’s strategic options. The upshot of this review was that the shareholders decided to embark on a trade sale process. Richard worked alongside Results as the purchaser shortlist was created, in particular clarifying historical trading data, contributing to the Information Memorandum and presenting to would-be purchasers alongside the founders. He also worked with tax advisers Kingston Smith to implement a share option scheme for senior managers.

In late September 2006, Omnicom, the US-based marketing services giant, was chosen as preferred bidder. Through October, November and December, Richard shepherded Flamingo through the acquisition process, providing the interface between the Flamingo’s shareholders, lawyers, tax advisers and Omnicom’s financial and due diligence teams. On 19 December 2006 the Flamingo group was sold to Omnicom.

Following the sale, Richard helped to smooth the integration of Flamingo into Omnicom by introducing procedures and resources to meet the significantly heavier financial reporting requirements – not least adherence to Sarbanes Oxley requirements. Despite inevitable disruption caused by the change of ownership, during 2007 the group continued to grow at a fast pace, successfully opened new offices in Tokyo and New York, is on track to achieve its earn-out targets, and continues to keep Richard busy several days a week.