Publicis Buying Microsoft’s Razorfish for $530 Million

Publicis Groupe, which owns Saatchi & Saatchi, will Microsoft’s Razorfish advertising agency for $530 million in cash and stock.

Razorfish will operate under its own name, and it will keep the Redmond-based software giant as a client.

Microsoft acquired digital ad firm Razorfish in 2007. Its clients include McDonald’s and Levi Strauss, and Microsoft rivals Google and Yahoo.

Headquartered in Seattle, Razorfish is one of the largest digital agencies, with more than 2,000 employees. The agency has offices in New York, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Portland, Boston, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Austin, and Fort Lauderdale. Through 2005-2007, it expanded overseas to London, Paris, Sydney, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Berlin, Frankfurt and Tokyo.