Matthew Freud buys stake in M&C Saatchi

The well-connected public relations guru has bought a stake of over 3pc in the advertising company M&C Saatchi.

Mr Freud is understood to have bought the shares in a personal capacity, not on behalf of Freud Communications, the PR firm he founded and still runs.

Freud Communications is controlled by the French media giant Publicis, which bought a 50.1pc stake in 2005. Mr Freud’s acquisition of 3.3pc of M&C Saatchi does not reflect any takeover ambitions by Publicis, sources said.

Mr Freud is married to Elisabeth Murdoch, the daughter of media magnate Rupert Murdoch, and is widely regarded as one of the best-connected people in the ­media industry.

He has worked with M&C Saatchi, including on the current “Change4Life” campaign by the Government to try to combat obesity. In common with many companies in the media sector, M&C Saatchi’s shares have been hammered in recent months, due to investors’ fears about the impact of the recession on the advertising industry. The company’s shares closed yesterday at 31p.

M&C Saatchi issued a statement after the stock market closed saying that it had been informed on February 18 that Mr Freud had bought just over two million shares, or 3.3pc.

Freud Communications’ clients range from Comic Relief and London as the host city for the 2012 Olympics, to companies such as Asda and Carphone Warehouse.

In an interview in this month’s Management Today magazine, Mr Freud denied that his company was dependent on his personal involvement. “Even third- or fourth-level people who work for us have ambition and attitude. There are 23 people on the board, every single one of whom is a person you’d appreciate having in the room. The value of the company is not me. There are clients I work on, but the point of the agency is that there’s thinking at the top and a huge depth of execution below,” Mr Freud said.