Maiden eyes South with billboard buyout plan
Outdoor advertising company Maiden Outdoor is in negotiations to buy the privately-owned billboard company CP, following its acquisition of poster operator Metro for an undisclosed sum.
Metro has 670 48-sheet sites and 55 96-sheet sites in Yorkshire, Tyne Tees, West Country and South Wales. Maiden already handles sales for many of the sites.
Although Maiden refused to comment on the CP deal, it is known that CP has about 480 billboard sites in the London, Meridian and Anglia regions. The CP deal will strengthen Maiden in the important London and Southern areas.
Meanwhile, Maiden’s rival More Group has acquired Barnett’s Taxi Advertising for an estimated &£14m.
The acquisition will enable More to offer taxi advertising as part of a nationwide package.
Barnett’s, set-up 20 years ago, has access to a 3,000 taxi fleet in almost 100 locations around the UK including London, Edinburgh, Birmingham and the Channel Islands.
More chief executive Stevie Spring says: “Taxi advertising is an exciting and expanding market.”
Andrew Barnett, managing director of Barnett’s adds that the company would be keeping its name and making no redundancies.
Figures for Maiden’s 1999 results in last week’s issue (MW April 6) should have read: pre-tax profits of &£5.1m on a turnover of &£71.2m. The 1998 figures are &£6.5m profits on a &£67.8m turnover. Apologies.
