The deal, effective from Monday, 1 June, will see the integration of the companies’ offices in Cape Town and Johannesburg under the Meropa brand.

The merging of the two companies almost doubles the size of Meropa’s Cape Town office and the company now has more than 70 staff in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth and Durban.

Both Meropa and Lange have operated successfully for the past 26 years, and together have a depth of skills and breadth of services, including communications strategy, stakeholder relations, publicity, crisis communications, and investor relations and consultancy. Meropa’s operations include a specialist digital division, in-house video production, a training and a publishing division, as well as an events and consumer activations hub.

“The deal with Lange 360 makes sense for them, for us and most of all for our clients,” says Meropa chief executive Peter Mann. “We greatly admire what Ruth Golembo and her team have achieved. It’s an opportunity to leverage the strengths and synergies of both companies. They have tremendous clients and great people. We welcome them into Meropa.”

Golembo says: “Joining Meropa allows us to bring an even stronger national base to our clients. We will benefit from Meropa’s national footprint and their AfricaOne network which reaches into 18 mainly sub-Saharan African countries.”

“Equally, Meropa and its clients will benefit from our skills and knowledge and our global Worldcom public relations network which offers services in 95 countries on six continents. Lange remains the only Worldcom partner in Southern Africa. Through our national footprint, now as Meropa, we expect significant business growth and look forward to delivering on our joint strengths for existing and new clients.”

Golembo, who joins the Meropa board, will take on a newly created strategic role in the combined business. In Cape Town the integrated company will be run by Meropa’s Cape Town-based director Stephen Forbes. In Johannesburg, the business will be integrated under Meropa managing director Patrick Gearing.

Forbes says: “We have two strong teams in Cape Town. The task is to integrate them so the sum of the parts offers greater benefit to our clients.”

Meropa director Welcome Msomi says: “Whilst we remain a determinedly a low-key company, we are growing into a substantial business, focused on providing excellent, strategic advice and service to a growing portfolio of private- and public-sector clients.”

“We offer multi-platform content generation and media- and stakeholder-relations services which include visual, digital and social media as well as traditional media and stakeholder services. We have highly regarded media- and issues- management training and delivery services, dedicated events-management capacity, publications production, advertising and media-buying capacity.”

“At the heart of our service is leading strategic thinking which takes advantage of the ever-growing efficiency of public relations. Both Meropa and Lange 360 have prized their independence and are not ad-agency owned. The deal between the two of us makes us the largest - and the best - independent public relations agency in South Africa.”

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