Publicis’s investors will be eager to hear from chief executive Maurice Lévy on Tuesday when he hosts a conference call detailing its newly-minted deal to acquire Razorfish, Microsoft’s digital ad agency.

So far, they seem impressed. The French advertising group’s shares rose nearly 5 per cent yesterday after it beat rivals, including London-based WPP and Japanese rival Dentsu, to land the Seattle-based outfit for $530m in cash and shares. At 1.4 times estimated 2008 sales, that looks relatively good value – WPP paid about 3.3 times sales for 24/7 RealMedia, a web analytics company, in 2007; Publicis itself paid a similar multiple for Digitas, the interactive agency it bought for $1.3bn in 2006.