Blue Rubicon acquires Open Road

Arrowpoint Advisory's TMT sector team is pleased to announce the acquisition of Open Road by Blue Rubicon. Arrowpoint Advisory advised the shareholders of Open Road on the transaction.

Open Road was founded in 2007 by Graham McMillan, Martin Le Jeune and Nick DeLuca to provide integrated corporate communications, public affairs and corporate responsibility advice. Its clients include Amazon, Asda, Coca-Cola, National Grid and Vodafone.

Blue Rubicon is an international consultancy firm that leads strategic thinking in corporate reputation management, advising the boards of some of the world's largest businesses and brands around the world.  Its clients include facebook, GSK, McDonald's, Pearson and Shell.  It employs 200 people in London, Doha and Dubai.

The acquisition of Open Road deepens Blue Rubicon's existing strategic, corporate and crisis communications service offering, while broadening this to include new capabilities including public affairs, employee engagement and healthcare communications in the UK. The partnership is an important step in Blue Rubicon achieving its vision of becoming the global leader in transforming and enhancing reputations.

Graham McMillan, Open Road CEO, commented: “We believe we have found the perfect partner in Blue Rubicon, an agency which shares our values and has an outstanding reputation and client list. We are very excited about the synergies between the two agencies and about what we believe we can achieve together.

This was a complex deal and we simply could not have done it without Arrowpoint Advisory. They were expert, responsive, thorough, patient, helpful and provided the best possible advice throughout the process.”

Daniel Domberger, Managing Director at Arrowpoint Advisory and co-head of the TMT sector team, added: “An excellent strategic fit between two high quality businesses. It was particularly pleasing that the financial performance of Open Road became even stronger as we went through the process.”

Contact the deal team