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Our favourite ad this week: 

Anheuser-Busch launched a great new campaign this week for Bud Light, created by DDB Chicago. The series of TV spots feature the various everyday adventures of all-American guy Steve and his room-mate Zagar, a primitive spear-carrying tribesman from the Amazonian jungle (or somewhere). See the ill-matched duo play basketball, go bowling and take dates out to dinner, usually with disastrous results. All four spots can be seen on a dedicated website at http://www.zagarandsteve.com.

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Recently Revised Profiles and Snapshots

In the news this week: Advertisers

The summer heat has caused no let-up in the pace of global mergers and acquisitions. This week, HSBC agreed to buy Central America's Grupo Banistmo for $1.8bn, and computer chip maker AMD announced a takeover of ATI, a leading maker of PC graphics cards, for $5.4bn. Also in the US, HP is to pay $4.5bn for Mercury Interactive, a leading provider of business software testing and consultancy services. It is HP's biggest deal since its controversial merger with Compaq six years ago. 

Meanwhile in Korea, a creditor group put LG Card, the former credit card division of the LG chaebol up for sale. It is the third largest card business in Asia, and with a price tag estimated at around $5bn, the sale is widely expected to be Korea's biggest ever takeover. Local bank Shinhan, already one of LG Card's creditors, is the favourite to capture the business. In the Netherlands, Philips is mulling at least three private equity bids for its struggling semiconductor division. In the UK, hotel and restaurant owner Whitbread is said to be facing a possible break-up bid from US group Starwood. In Mexico, tequila maker Herradura is the subject of a bid battle between rival drinks groups Pernod Ricard, Brown-Forman and Bacardi. Herradura is a major player in the Mexican market but has only limited international distribution. Capping all these negotiations, however, is the biggest deal of the week by far, the $33bn private equity bid for US hospital operator HCA. Assuming it goes through, it will at last set a new record as the world’s largest-ever leveraged buy-out, breaking the near-20-year record set by KKR's $30bn RJR Nabisco buyout.

Going in the opposite direction from all these eager dealmakers, EMI announced it was dropping attempts to acquire Warner Music in the light of the recent shock annulment of the Sony BMG merger.

Google's share of the web search market continues to rise. In the first half of 2006, its estimated share of all US-based searches rose to 48%, compared to 31% for Yahoo and 14% for Microsoft's MSN. Yahoo announced delays to implementation of an improved version of its own search engine last week, causing its shares to plummet to their lowest level for two years. In other online news, Amazon was said to be preparing to launch a new video download service, along similar lines to the Apple iTunes concept, but for movies and TV episodes instead of music. Microsoft gave a name to its own music download service, due for launch later this year: Zune.

Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin survived an attempt by several institutional shareholders to remove him from the group's board at this week's AGM. Sarin has been under intense pressure for several months to deliver an improvement in financial performance and the Vodafone share price.

German press giant Axel Springer confirmed it was developing plans to launch a tabloid daily newspaper in France, along similar lines to FAKT which it launched with great success in Poland in 2003. The group recently poached the editorial director of Metro France to lead the project.

Reebok announced that it had signed actress Scarlett Johansson to develop a signature footwear collection under the Scarlett Hearts Rbk brand.

In the news this week: Agencies

M&C Saatchi has finalised arrangements for the opening of an office in Germany, having acquired a majority stake in local agency International. 

Among the confirmed account changes this week, Initiative picked up pan-European media for Burger King, and US duties for Gorton's seafood and Bang & Olufsen. Henkel moved a number of its major laundry and cleaning products in Germany out of BBDO and into sister networks DDB and TBWA. Wyeth awarded creative on its Centrum vitamins account to Kaplan Thaler. DFS Furniture transferred broadcast creative out of PWLC and into Sheffield independent Uber. Reviews were called by XM Statellite Radio and Heineken in the US, Sony Ericsson worldwide (resigned by BBH), and BMW in Germany (after incumbent Jung von Matt won the business of arch-rival Mercedes).

Regards


Simon Tesler
Publisher, Adbrands

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