Buyout firm Epiris plots £230m swoop on Next 15 divisions

The private equity firm which owns the Las Iguanas and Cafe Rouge restaurant chains is in talks to buy a sizeable chunk of Next 15 Group, the London-listed marketing services group.

Sky News has learnt that Epiris, which owns the Big Table casual dining group and also counted auctioneer Bonhams among its recent investments, has approached Next 15 Group about a deal. City sources said on Monday that Epiris's offer included Next 15 subsidiaries MHP Communications, a leading financial public relations firm.

M Booth, a consumer marketing operation; Outcast, another PR agency; and Activate, a business-to-business demand generation specialist, are also said to form part of the deal perimeter. Ares Management, the private credit giant, is understood to have been approached by Epiris to help finance its offer.

Discussions between Epiris and Next 15 are said to be ongoing, although insiders cautioned that a transaction was not certain to materialise. Sky News reported the approach to Next 15 earlier this year, although the identity of the bidder was unclear at that stage.

Next 15 is a marketing services conglomerate which is effectively a smaller replica of industry giants such as Publicis and WPP, the latter of which is engulfed in strategic uncertainty. Sir Martin Sorrell, the WPP founder who now runs S4 Capital, has also been in talks about taking the business private.

A sale of its Marker division would leave Next 15 focused on its remaining technology and data-driven client businesses.Next 15 issued a profit warning and changed its leadership earlier this year as it disclosed "potential serious misconduct" related to Mach49, a Silicon Valley advisory business it owns. Tim Dyson, its chief executive for over three decades, has retired and been replaced by Sam Knights, the boss of Shopper Media Group, one of its subsidiaries.

The group has already been engaged in selling a number of units. Next 15 has a market value of about £420m after seeing its stock rally in recent months.

The shares, which were trading at about 404.5p on Monday afternoon, are broadly flat over the last year. Epiris, Ares and Next 15 all declined to comment..