Identica set to grow under Cossette

Michael Peters has sold The Identica Partnership, the branding group he founded in 1992, to Canada’s Cossette Communication Group for an undisclosed sum.

Peters says the full-service marketing communications network Cossette has bought ‘the entire business’ – both Identica and Tango Design – in order to ‘give it a design foothold in Europe and spearhead further acquisitions and development in the European market’, he continues.

The Identica Partnership’s role and name will remain the same, says Peters, and he will continue to act as the group’s chairman and executive creative director under a four-year earn-out scheme.

The group is expected to reap the benefits of the acquisition immediately, with the opening of a New York office, which Peters hopes will eventually ‘challenge the WPPs and Omnicoms’ in the US.

Peters says the office will initially ‘start small, with five to six people’, but is expected to support 15 to 20 people within the first year. Staff will not be transferred from The Identica Partnership’s London office, which will ‘stay intact’, and will instead be recruited in the US, he adds.

Peters, acknowledged as one of Britain’s most successful designers, floated the then Michael Peters Group in 1983. The group went into receivership in 1990 after the ill-fated acquisition of Hembrecht Terrell.