LiveRamp Shareholders Approve Publicis Buy

Shareholders of data collaboration software firm LiveRamp have overwhelmingly approved its acquisition by marcoms holding group Publicis, at a special meeting this week; but voted against related executive compensation packages. The latter vote was advisory only and the payments may still happen.

LiveRamp is headquartered in San Francisco, employees around 1,300 people and reported annual revenue up 9% to $813m in 2025. The company operates a global data collaboration platform allowing companies to unify, manage and activate data across the digital ecosystem, connecting more than 25,000 publisher domains and 500 technology and data partners across fourteen markets. In May, the company announced it had agreed a sale to Groupe Publicis for a total enterprise value of around $2.2 billion. In this week's vote, around 99.9% of shareholders approved the merger, with just 60,000 against it. Some 92.3% of the company's votes were represented at the meeting.

Shareholders used the advisory vote on executive compensation to express their disapproval of plans to pay substantial compensation packages to execs in connection with the merger - 44.3m voted against these and only 7.3m in favour. However LiveRamp's proxy filing indicated that these payments could still happen if the acquisition is completed and relevant conditions met.

The meeting also saw Timothy R. Cadogan, Vivian Chow, and Scott E. Howe (re-)elected to the Board of Directors for three-year terms. Howe (pictured) is LiveRamp's CEO and post-merger will report to Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun. The deal remains on course to complete this year: LiveRamp will continue as an independent business within Publicis and its financial results will be reported under the latter's Technology segment.

Web site: www.liveramp.com .