Luxury marketing: The Independents brings Stéphane Courbit and TowerBrook into its capital

The Independents, a French group based in Paris and specialist in events and digital marketing in fashion, luxury and “lifestyle”, have just completed two major financial operations. Very international because born of the merger between K2 – an event organization and production company focused on the Asian market and founded by Isabelle and Olivier Chouvet in 2002 -, and the agency Karla Otto, specialist in communication and digital present in Europe and the United States which was born in 1982. The firm has just raised 400 million dollars.

In detail, a large part of this sum was raised in the form of debt from several banking organizations, namely the International Bank in Luxembourg, Société Générale, LCL, Banque Postale and CIC Private debt.

The rest is made up, to a lesser extent, of “equity” since the Anglo-Saxon investment fund TowerBrook and FL Entertainment – which includes Banijay audiovisual production giant (“Masterchef”, “Big Brother”) and Betclic – by Stéphane Courbit have just entered the capital of The Independents as minority shareholders.

“Complete our offer with acquisitions between 50 million and 100 million dollars”

With this windfall, the group intends to further develop its international activities, but also to intensify its external growth strategy. “The idea is to complete our offer with acquisitions between 50 million and 100 million dollars, as we have already been able to do in recent years, underlines Olivier Chouvet, co-founder of The Independents.

“Afterwards, we are not going to rush because we are in a” business people “and the foundation of The Independents is to create a club of entrepreneurs in which everyone moves in the same direction”, specifies Isabelle Chouvet, CEO of The Independents. Lefty, The Qode or more recently Project. The group has carried out several mergers and acquisitions in recent years. All the directors are partners of The Independents, which has 13 offices and today employs nearly 700 people around the world.

Acquisition of Bureau Betak in 2021

The most structuring of them took place in 2021 when the company got hold of Bureau Betak the agency launched in 1990 by Alexander of Betak – who continues to drive it and is today the second largest shareholder of The Independents behind the Chouvet couple -, which is one of the references in the world of fashion and parades and then generated nearly 100 million dollars in revenue per year.

At the time, this “deal” had enabled The Independents to double its size, to nearly 200 million dollars in consolidated turnover. Last year, the group generated 350 million in revenue and intends to double its activity by 2025, to 700 million.