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This is a fairly comprehensive article with a multitude of reference quotes, well worth reading as from a respected publisher too..

‘Human skills’ are at a premium again now that big companies are backpedaling on error-prone AI

https://fortune.com/2025/09/10/ai-adoption-declines-big-companies-human-skills-premium-education-gen-z/

There's some interesting debate going on as to whether Open Ai will actually succeed, lots of questions over the actual model and scale needed to make it work.

Open Ai is a non profit but still needs to pay its bills, its also has many partners and is seen as the forerunner for Ai in general.

I still think Ai is a fantastic tool but with a closed or private LLM, that in itself limits the commercial adoption.

These concepts often don't work out, Amazon launched 'till-less' grocery stores a while back, here is what the Grocer said on today's closures:

''There were huge numbers of closures and churn too. Still felt like tech looking for a problem to solve, until it wasn't... Sad for the team involved.'

I see S4 or monks adoption as the way to go, in the hands of experienced professionals that know how to employ the tech, Photoshop is a brilliant piece of software but have you ever tried using it, you could spend a whole afternoon learning how to crop a photo.

Auson, my thoughts were more to do with big wins and how they play out in the second half, especially the as yet undisclosed FMCG client.

What threw me is how similar this was to the recent THG presentation, they too have as yet an undisclosed partner, how to re-listed but pretty sure this was in the FMCG sector too. -

Interested (very) to see if we get any director disclosures this week or TR1, perhaps the undisclosed client my prevent any board purchases, not sure on that one tbh..

Good to see it start with a '2', roll on the 3's lol

Online is the way to go, especially with high street rates and pilfering..

'High street health and beauty chain Bodycare announces closure of 56 stores -'

'Bodycare, known for selling brands like L'Oreal, Elizabeth Arden and Nivea, was profitable before the pandemic but racked up heavy losses despite receiving government support. '

Watched the investor presentation over the weekend, really impressed with Wes ter Haar slot which was concise and to the point using the Google Pixel smart phone ad as an example.

Not many questions, I think the audience were looking for direction, that was my feeling as they are unsure of the overall impact of Ai still.

Someone earlier mentioned the question around end of year debt not being answered, SMS did respond with a somewhat cheeky reply to the analyst, in essence it depends on how they want to allocate free cash flow at year end, thats not verbatim but along those lines.

Overall I felt the panel were confident and did a good job at conveying the opportunities ahead..albeit with a few hurdles to overcome..   

Interesting article and very much reinforces the notion of 'tools' for agencies rather than an outright replacement of agencies themselves.

'One agency executive who attended the event described the summit as a “total 180” from agencies’ concerns about Zuckerberg’s previous comments. Rather than replacing agencies, Meta framed the tools as “convenience boosters” designed to help agencies operate more efficiently within Meta’s ecosystem.'

I wanted to post this a while back but lost the link, has a bit more meat of it with reargd to partnership detail (from Aug).

https://www.nutraingredients-asia.com/Article/2025/08/25/thg-partners-cj-to-accelerate-myproteins-omnichannel-growth-in-south-korea/#:~:text=THG%2DCJ%20partnership%20aims%20to,THG)

Click on >funds >selling

This shows the 250 funds that sold out previously plus a bunch of other trackers, presumably this is now being reversed ..

https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/xlon/thg/ownership

It could be NVIDIA investment in Intel which has prompted the sell off with the N100 being a competitor.

Reduced their holding, from memory GA-Courtenay were mentioned sometime ago in the media as they have an interest in RPI.

Maybe it was another company, but these guys are a hedge fund specialising in M & A activity hence my interest.

On the subject of director buys, this is from an old posts (not mine) which I saved for reference, not sure about the first line but subsequent entries I think are accurate.

You would think therefore 18p might see a bit of interest ?

--------------------------------------------------

Sorrell was piling in at £5. Turns out playing the stock market isn't always a strength of business directors..

---------------------------------------------------

Various directors piled in at a price of 142p per share, with the transactions dated 23 and 25 October 2019.

Among them, executive chairman Sir Martin bought nearly 9m shares for £12.7m, taking his holding to 55.4m shares.

Oro en Fools, the joint personal holding company of executive directors Victor Knaap and Wesley ter Haar, bought shares worth £4.1m,

while SEF4 Investment SCSP – managed by Stanhope Capital, of which S4 non-executive director Daniel Pinto is chief executive – bought shares worth £19.5m.

S4 Capital ♥ * Daniel Pinto 23/25 Oct 19 13,729,405 142 19,495,755 41,212,366 8.841

S4 Capital * Peter Rademaker (cfo) 23/25 Oct 19 136,600 142 193,972 844,732 0.181

S4 Capital * Rupert Walker 23/25 Oct 19 251,500 142 357,130 1,555,276 0.334

S4 Capital * Scott Spirit 23/25 Oct 19 26,097 142 37,058 161,389 0.035

S4 Capital * Sue Prevezer 23/25 Oct 19 34,494 142 48,981 261,766 0.056

S4 Capital * Martin Sorrell (ch) 23/25 Oct 19 8,951,377 142 12,710,955 55,355,077 11.875

S4 Capital * Paul Roy 25 Oct 19 307,266 142 436,318 1,900,129 0.408

S4 Capital ♥ * Victor Knaap/Wesley ter Haar 23 Oct 19 2,862,153 142 4,064,257 33,670,378 7.223

Yep, EUR notes are variable rates, very good chance central bank will drop again given Germany's economic woes.

Fed, consider two more cuts too, this has given an bit of stimulus to consumer stocks, trackers have moved quite a bit on this..

Meanwhile BoE stuck in the mud..lol

In terms of paying down the debt by year end, at end of June S4 had £175m of cash and equivalents on the books, depending on anticipated cash flow some of this could be used?

Tis a good read, it was posted earlier in the week with a subsequent video made from it.

Absence of director buys is indeed intriguing, I can't see it being related to the original MSQ story as we had a watershed RNS.

Perhaps other conversations are being had, this is what Publicis had to say back in July:

'Strategic investments, including in acquiring and enhancing its artificial intelligence capabilities, are supporting the growth using a so-called “bolt-on” M&A strategy to reinforce AI capabilities in data management, new media, production and business transformation.

Publicis Groupe spent over $10 billion between 2015 and 2025 on properties, including Sapient and Epsilon, as well as more than an additional $2 billion since 2024 to launch its Core AI product. A recently unveiled partnership through Publicis Sapient will create an AI Center of Excellence to help clients reshape their enterprises.'

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/publicis-groupe-forecasts-sunny-h2-105000071.html

But instead of onboarding fewer juniors, whose roles have traditionally been dominated by clerical tasks like meeting minutes and reporting, Bornman revealed his division was changing training programmes, tailoring them towards client relations and the effective use of AI tools.

“The skills we need to teach them are no longer, ‘push these 17 buttons,'” he said. “The skill… is how to engage with clients, with people, and our training programmes have shifted quite a lot of the last few years.”

https://www.cityam.com/worlds-largest-ad-agency-bucks-grad-hiring-slowdown-we-have-to-train-the-next-gen/

Healthcare giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has snapped up Sierra Oncology – a California-based, late-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on treatments for rare forms of cancer.

It will acquire the company for $55 per share in a cash deal, representing a total equity value of $1.9bn (£1.5bn).

This a premium of approximately 63 per cent on Sierra Oncology’s weighted average price over the past 30 trading days.

https://www.cityam.com/glaxosmithkline-clinches-cancer-specialist-sierra-oncology-in-1-9bn-deal/

Yup, agreed, it can make people lazy certainly in the learning environment..

The video below (sorry Nige) is a good example of that, almost certainly Ai produced its taken the article transcript dded a few visuals and knocked it out as a 'deep dive' yet no one has noticed, these type of videos are all over YouTube diluting the experience.

It does have its place in the media world though, its just not the panacea for all our ills that Silicon Valley is promoting.

The whole Ai thing whilst generally positive has sucked a lot of cash and interest out of the market, that however might change over the next few months with returns failing to materialise as forecast.

The following video encapsulates a lot of the individual points made in recent months with my various posts and ramblings, Sabine Hossenfelder who is behind the video is well respected with a good following, this is not just click bait but a well rounded overview of Ai in the real world - we now have coders advertising for 'vibe coding', in other-words a specialist service to de-bug Ai created code making it stable, coding was one of the main pillars of Ai being rolled out.

This doesn't detract from Ai as a tool, you only have to listed to S4 team to see its making a positive contribution in terms of speed and cost efficiency, for analogies perhaps buying a socket set for your other half doesn't mean he becomes a mechanic, the skill lies in how to use the tools not the tool itself..

5 Signs the AI Bubble is Bursting

Sabine Hossenfelder

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L1JbzDnEMk

Lets see what Patient Capital and Third Ave do, along with the board in terms of share purchases.

The article below points out the Golden share, but I can't see that being an obstacle if the right deal came along, it also mentions the attractiveness of the assets as an acquisition target.

Daniel Pinto of Stanhope Capital is an investor in S4 from the early days, also a partner and investor in S4V, something else to keep in mind as the plates spin.

SI Partners advises on merger between TOMORROW + S4Capital’s Content Practice MediaMonks

Sector

Date January 2021

https://www.siglobal.com/deals/si-partners-advise-merger-tomorrow-mediamonks/

SI Partners advises data & analytics consultancy Brightblue on merger with MightyHive

Date August 2020

https://www.siglobal.com/deals/si-partners-brightblue-merger-mightyhive/