International law firm, Osborne Clarke has advised the shareholders of Precise Media, including UK private equity house Phoenix Equity Partners, on the sale of a majority stake in the company to WPP’s research arm, Kantar.

Precise Media is one of the UK’s largest media monitoring agencies which uses software to sift through up to 75m pieces of digital content per month and summarises its content for customers such as HSBC and Tesco, providing them with analysis as to whether content is positive or negative, and how their brand is performing. WPP is the world’s largest marketing services company

Osborne Clarke partner and Head of Markets Greg Leyshon commented:

“We have been involved with Precise since their 2005 management buy-out backed by 3i, and we are delighted to have been involved in the successful conclusion of this transaction, alongside corporate finance advisors KPMG. We are confident the combined business will continue to go from strength to strength.”

CEO of Precise Media, Peter Low, said: “Being part of Kantar will bring significant opportunities and my colleagues and I look forward to developing the business further. The support we received from KPMG and Osborne Clarke enabled us to complete the sale process within an extremely challenging timeframe and achieve a very good result for our shareholders.”